BATIKS 
OF  Gi^Om^^ 


JFtVlN     S.    e  OBB 


■M 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA.  SAN  DIEGO 


3  1822  02211  7980 


lARY 

SITY  OF 
DRNIA 

3IEG0 


J 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SAN  DIEGO 


3  1822  02211  7980 


^3  0 


PATHS  OF  GLORY 


PATHS  OF  GLORY 

Impressions  of  War  Written 
At    and  Near  the  Front 


REVISED  EDITION 


BY 

IRVIN  S.   COBB 

AUTHOR  OF 
BACK  HOME,  EUROPE  REVISED,  Etc. 


"  The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grace. " 

— Thomas  Gray. 


>     X     < 


NEW    YORK 

GROSSET    &    DUNLAP 

PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT,  1915  and  1917 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  191h 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1914,  1915,  and  1917 
BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


To   THE   MeI^IORT 
OF 

MAJOR  ROBERT  COBB 

(Cobb's  Kentucky  Battery,  C.  S.  A.) 


FOREWORD 

The  bulk  of  this  book's  contents  was  written 
before  our  own  country  entered  the  war.  The 
matter  included  in  the  two  final  chapters  was 
written  after  we  entered  the  war.  It  is  here 
added  because  the  author  believes  it  now  to 
be  a  proper  part  of  his  narrative. 

I.  S.  C. 

January,  1918. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  A  Little  Village  Called  Montignies  St.  Chris- 

TOPHE IS 

11.  To  War  IN  A  Taxicab 27 

III,  Sherman  Said  It 52 

IV.  "Marsch,    Marsch,    Marsch,    So    Geh'n    Wir 

Weiter" 82 

V.  Being  a  Gtjest  of  the  Ka.iser 109 

VI.  With  the  German  Wrecking  Crew     ....  140 

VII.  The  Grapes  of  Wrath 164 

Vin.  Three  Generals  and  a  Cook 198 

IX.  Viewing  a  Battle  from  a  Balloon     ....  226 

X.  In  the  Trenches  Before  Rheims 251 

XI.  War  de  Luxe 262 

XII.  The  Rut  of  Big  Guns  in  France 294 

XIII.  Those  Yellow  Pine  Boxes 315 

XIV.  The  Red  Glutton 334 

XV.  Belgium — The  Rag  Doll  of  Europe  ....  369 

XVI.  LouvAiN  the  Forsaken 408 

^    XVII.  "Thrice  Is  He  Armed— " "".  415 

(XVIII.  The  Prussian  Paranoia 438 


CHAPTER  I 

A  LITTLE  VILLAGE  CALLED  MON- 
TIGNIES  ST.  CHRISTOPHE 


WE  passed  through  It  late  in  the  after- 
noon— this  little  Belgian  town  called 
Montignies     St.     Christophe  —  just 
twenty-four   hours    behind    a   dust- 
colored  German  column.     I  am  going  to  try- 
now  to  tell  how  it  looked  to  us. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  I  passed  this  way  a 
year  before,  or  a  little  less,  though  I  cannot  be 
quite  certain  as  to  that.  Traveling  'cross 
country,  the  country  is  likely  to  look  different 
from  the  way  it  looked  when  you  viewed  it 
from  the  window  of  a  railroad  carriage. 

Of  this  much,  though,  I  am  sure:  If  I  did 
not  pass  through  this  little  town  of  Montignies 
St.  Christophe  then,  at  least  I  passed  through 
fifty  like  it — each  a  single  line  of  gray  houses 
strung,  like  beads  on  a  cord,  along  a  white, 
straight  road,  with  fields  behind  and  elms  in 
front;  each  with  its  small,  ugly  church,  its 
wine  shop,  its  drinking  trough,  its  priest  in 
[13] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


black,  and  its  one  lone  gendarme  in  his  pre- 
posterous housings  of  saber  and  belt  and  shoul- 
der straps. 

I  rather  imagine  I  tried  to  think  up  some- 
thing funny  to  say  about  the  shabbj?^  grandeur 
of  the  gendarme  or  the  acid  flavor  of  the 
cooking  vinegar  sold  at  the  drinking  place  under 
the  name  of  wine;  for  that  time  I  was  supposed 
to  be  writing  humorous  articles  on  European 
travel.  ^ 

But  now  something  had  happened  to  Mon- 
tignies  St.  Christophe  to  lift  it  out  of  the  dun, 
dull  sameness  that  made  it  as  one  with  so  many 
other  unimportant  villages  in  this  upper  left- 
hand  corner  of  the  map  of  Europe.  The  war 
had  come  this  way;  and,  coming  so,  had  dealt 
it  a  side-slap. 

We  came  to  it  just  before  dusk.  All  day  we 
had  been  hurrying  along,  trying  to  catch  up 
with  the  German  rear  guard;  but  the  Germans 
moved  faster  than  we  did,  even  though  they 
fought  as  they  went.  They  had  gone  round 
the  southern  part  of  Belgium  like  coopers 
round  a  cask,  hooping  it  in  with  tight  bands 
of  steel.  Belgium — or  this  part  of  it — vras  all 
barreled  up  now:  chines,  staves  and  bung;  and 
the  Germans  were  already  across  the  line,  beat- 
ing down  the  sod  of  France  with  their  pelting 
feet. 

Besides  we  had  stopped  often,  for  there 
was  so  much  to  see  and  to  hear.  There  was 
the  hour  we  spent  at  Merbes-le-Chateau,  where 
[141 


A    LITTLE   VILLAGE 


the  English  had  been;  and  the  hour  we  spent 
at  La  Bussiere,  on  the  river  Sambre,  where  a 
fight  had  been  fought  two  days  earHer;  but 
Merbes-le-Chateau  is  another  story  and  so  is 
La  Bussiere.  Just  after  La  Bussiere  we  came 
to  a  tiny  village  named  Neuville  and  halted 
while  the  local  Jack-of-all-trades  mended  for 
us  an  invalided  tire  on  a  bicycle. 

As  we  grouped  in  the  narrow  space  before 
his  shop,  with  a  hiving  swarm  of  curious  vil- 
lagers buzzing  about  us,  an  improvised  am- 
bulance, with  a  red  cross  painted  on  its  side 
over  the  letters  of  a  baker's  sign,  went  up  the 
steep  hill  at  the  head  of  the  cobbled  street. 
At  that  the  women  m  the  doorways  of  the 
small  cottages  twisted  their  gnarled  red  hands 
in  their  aprons,  and  whispered  fearsomely 
among  themselves,  so  that  the  sibilant  sound 
of  their  voices  ran  up  and  down  the  line  of 
houses  in  a  long,  quavering  hiss. 

The  wagon,  it  seemed,  was  bringing  in  a 
wounded  French  soldier  who  had  been  found 
in  the  woods  beyond  the  river.  He  was  one 
of  the  last  to  be  found  alive,  which  was  another 
way  of  saying  that  for  two  days  and  two 
nights  he  had  been  lying  helpless  in  the  thicket, 
his  stomach  empty  and  his  wounds  raw.  On 
each  of  those  two  nights  it  had  rained,  and 
rained  hard. 

Just  as  we  started  on  our  way  the  big  guns 
began  booming  somewhere  ahead  of  us  toward 
the  southwest;  so  we  turned  in  that  direction. 
fl5l 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


We  had  heard  the  guns  distinctly  in  the  early 
forenoon,  and  again,  less  distinctly,  about 
noontime.  Thereafter,  for  a  while,  there  had 
been  a  lull  in  the  firing;  but  now  it  was  con- 
stant— a  steady,  sustained  boom-boom-boom, 
so  far  away  that  it  fell  on  the  eardrums  as  a 
gentle  concussion;  as  a  throb  of  air,  rather  than 
as  a  real  sound.  For  three  days  now  we  had 
been  following  that  distant  voice  of  the  cannon, 
trying  to  catch  up  with  it  as  it  advanced,  al- 
ways southward,  toward  the  French  frontier. 
Therefore  we  flogged  the  belly  of  our  tired  horse 
with  the  lash  of  a  long  whip,  and  hurried  along. 

There  were  five  of  us,  all  Americans.  The 
two  who  rode  on  bicycles  pedaled  ahead  as 
outriders,  and  the  remaining  three  followed  on 
behind  with  the  horse  and  the  dogcart.  We 
had  bought  the  outfit  that  morning  and  we 
were  to  lose  it  that  night.  The  horse  was  an 
aged  mare,  with  high  withers,  and  galls  on 
her  shoulders  and  fetlocks  unshorn,  after  the 
fashion  of  Belgian  horses;  and  the  dogcart  was 
a  venerable  ruin,  which  creaked  a  great  pro- 
test at  every  turn  of  the  warped  wheels  on  the 
axle.  We  had  been  able  to  buy  the  two — the 
mare  and  the  cart — only  because  the  German 
soldiers  had  not  thought  them  worth  the 
taking. 

In  this  order,  then,  we  proceeded.     Pretty 

soon  the  mare  grew  so  weary  she  could  hardly 

lift  her   shaggy   old  legs;   so,   footsore   as   we 

were,  we  who  rode  dismounted  and  trudged 

[16] 


A    LITTLE    VILLAGE 


on,  taking  turns  at  dragging  her  forward  by 
the  bit.  I  presume  we  went  ahead  thus  for 
an  hour  or  more,  along  an  interminable  straight 
road  and  past  miles  of  the  checkered  light  and 
dark  green  fields  which  in  harvest  time  made 
a  great  backgammon  board  of  this  whole  coun- 
try of  Belgium. 

The  road  was  empty  of  natives — empty,  too, 
of  German  wagon  trains;  and  these  seemed  to 
us  curious  things,  because  there  had  until 
then  been  hardly  a  minute  of  the  day  when 
we  were  not  passing  soldiers  or  meeting  refugees. 

Almost  without  warning  we  came  on  this 
little  village  called  Montignies  St.  Christophe. 
A  six-armed  signboard  at  a  crossroads  told  us 
its  name— a  rather  impressive  name  ordinarily 
for  a  place  of  perhaps  twenty  houses,  all  told. 
But  now  tragedy  had  given  it  distinction;  had 
painted  that  straggling  frontier  hamlet  over 
with  such  colors  that  the  picture  of  it  is  going 
to  live  in  my  memory  as  long  as  I  do  live. 
At  the  upper  end  of  the  single  street,  like  an 
outpost,  stood  an  old  chateau,  the  seat,  no 
doubt,  of  the  local  gentry,  with  a  small  park 
of  beeches  and  elms  round  it;  and  here,  right 
at  the  park  entrance,  we  had  our  first  intima- 
tion that  there  had  been  a  fight.  The  gate 
stood  ajar  between  its  chipped  stone  pillars, 
and  just  inside  the  blue  coat  of  a  French  cav- 
alry officer,  jaunty  and  new  and  much  braided 
with  gold  lace  on  the  collar  and  cuffs,  hung 
from  the  limb  of  a  small  tree.  Beneath  the 
[17] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


tree  were  a  sheaf  of  straw  in  the  shape  of  a 
bed  and  the  ashes  of  a  dead  camp  fire;  and  on 
the  grass,  plain  to  the  eye,  a  plump,  well- 
picked  pullet,  all  ready  for  the  pot  or  the  pan. 
Looking  on  past  these  things  we  saw  much 
scattered  dunnage:  Frenchmen's  knapsacks, 
flannel  shirts,  playing  cards,  fagots  of  firewood 
mixed  together  like  jackstraws,  canteens  cov- 
ered with  slate-blue  cloth  and  having  queer 
little  hornlike  protuberances  on  their  tops — 
which  proved  them  to  be  French  canteens — 
tumbled  straw,  odd  shoes  with  their  lacings 
undone,  a  toptilted  service  shelter  of  canvas; 
all  the  riffle  of  a  camp  that  had  been  suddenly 
and  violently  disturbed. 

As  I  think  back  it  seems  to  me  that  not  until 
that  moment  had  it  occurred  to  us  to  regard 
closely  the  cottages  and  shops  beyond  the 
clumped  trees  of  the  chateau  grounds.  We  v/ere 
desperately  weary,  to  begin  with,  and  our  eyes, 
those  past  three  days,  had  grown  used  to  the 
signs  of  misery  and  waste  and  ruin,  abundant 
and  multiplying  in  the  wake  of  the  hard- 
pounding  hoofs  of  the  conqueror. 

Now,  all  of  a  sudden,  I  became  aware  that 
this  town  literally  had  been  shot  to  bits. 
From  our  side — that  is  to  say,  from  the  north 
and  likewise  from  the  west — the  Germans  had 
shelled  it.  From  the  south,  plainly,  the 
French  had  answered.  The  village,  in  between, 
had  caught  the  full  force  and  fury  of  the  con- 
tending fires.  Probably  the  inhabitants  had 
[18] 


A    LITTLE    VILLAGE 


warning;  probably  they  fled  when  the  German 
skirmishers  surprised  that  outpost  of  French- 
men camping  in  the  park.  One  imagined  them 
scurrying  Hke  rabbits  across  the  fields  and 
through  the  cabbage  patches.  But  they  had 
left  their  belongings  behind,  all  their  small 
petty  gearings  and  garnishings,  to  be  wrecked 
in  the  wrenching  and  racking  apart  of  their 
homes. 

A  railroad  track  emerged  from  the  fields 
and  ran  along  the  one  street.  Shells  had  fallen 
on  it  and  exploded,  ripping  the  steel  rails  from 
the  crossties,  so  that  they  stood  up  all  along 
in  a  jagged  formation,  like  rows  of  snaggled 
teeth.  Other  shells,  dropping  in  the  road,  had 
so  wrought  with  the  stone  blocks  that  they 
were  piled  here  in  heaps,  and  there  were  de- 
pressed into  caverns  and  crevasses  four  or  five 
or  six  feet  deep. 

Every  house  in  sight  had  been  hit  again  and 
again  and  again.  One  house  would  have  its 
whole  front  blown  in,  so  that  we  could  look 
right  back  to  the  rear  walls  and  see  the  pans  on 
the  kitchen  shelves.  Another  house  would  lack 
a  roof  to  it,  and  the  tidy  tiles  that  had  made 
the  roof  were  now  red  and  yellow  rubbish, 
piled  like  broken  shards  outside  a  potter's 
door.  The  doors  stood  open,  and  the  windows, 
with  the  windowpanes  all  gone  and  in  some 
instances  the  sashes  as  well,  leered  emptily 
like  eye-sockets  without  eyes. 

So  it  went.  Two  of  the  houses  had  caught 
[19] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


fire  and  the  interiors  were  quite  burned  away. 
A  sodden  smell  of  burned  things  came  from 
the  still  smoking  ruins;  but  the  walls,  being  of 
thick  stone,  stood. 

Our  poor  tired  old  nag  halted  and  sniffed 
and  snorted.  If  she  had  had  energy  enough  I 
reckon  she  would  have  shied  about  and  run 
back  the  way  she  had  come,  for  now,  just  ahead, 
lay  two  dead  horses — a  big  gray  and  a  roan — 
with  their  stark  legs  sticking  out  across  the 
road.  The  gray  was  shot  through  and  through 
in  three  places.  The  right  fore  hoof  of  the  roan 
had  been  cut  smack  off,  as  smoothly  as  though 
done  with  an  ax;  and  the  stiffened  leg  had  a 
curiously  unfinished  look  about  it,  suggesting 
a  natural  malformation.  Dead  only  a  few 
hours,  their  carcasses  already  had  begun  to 
swell.  The  skin  on  their  bellies  was  as  tight 
as  a  drumhead. 

We  forced  the  quivering  mare  past  the  two 
dead  horses.  Beyond  them  the  road  was  a 
litter.  Knapsacks,  coats,  canteens,  handker- 
chiefs, pots,  pans,  household  utensils,  bottles, 
jugs  and  caps  were  everywhere.  The  deep 
ditches  on  either  side  of  the  road  w^ere  clogged 
with  such  things.  The  dropped  caps  and  the 
abandoned  knapsacks  were  always  French  caps 
and  French  knapsacks,  cast  aside,  no  doubt, 
for  a  quick  flight  after  the  melee. 

The  Germans  had  charged  after  shelling  the 
town,  and  then  the  French  had  fallen  back — 
or  at  least  so  we  deduced  from  the  looks  of 
120] 


A    LITTLE    VILLAGE 


things.  In  the  debris  was  no  object  that  be- 
spoke German  workmanship  or  German  owner- 
ship. This  rather  puzzled  us  until  we  learned 
that  the  Germans,  as  tidy  in  this  game  of  war 
as  in  the  game  of  life,  made  it  a  hard-and-fast 
rule  to  gather  up  their  own  belongings  after 
every  engagement,  great  or  small,  leaving  be- 
hind nothing  that  might  serve  to  give  the 
enemy  an  idea  of  their  losses. 

We  went  by  the  church.  Its  spire  w^as  gone; 
but,  strange  to  say,  a  small  flag — the  Tricolor 
of  France — still  fluttered  from  a  window  where 
some  one  had  stuck  it.  We  went  by  the  taverne, 
or  wine  shop,  which  had  a  sign  over  its  door — 
a  creature  remotely  resembling  a  blue  lynx. 
And  through  the  door  we  saw  half  a  loaf  of 
bread  and  several  bottles  on  a  table.  We  went 
by  a  rather  pretentious  house,  with  pear  trees 
in  front  of  it  and  a  big  barn  alongside  it;  and 
right  under  the  eaves  of  the  barn  I  picked  up 
the  short  jacket  of  a  French  trooper,  so  new 
and  fresh  from  the  workshop  that  the  white 
cambric  lining  was  hardly  soiled.  The  figure 
18  was  on  the  collar;  we  decided  that  its  wearer 
must  have  belonged  to  the  Eighteenth  Cavalrj' 
Regiment.  Behind  the  barn  we  found  a  whole 
pile  of  new  knapsacks  —  the  light  play-soldier 
knapsacks  of  the  French  infantrymen,  not  half 
so  heavy  or  a  third  so  substantial  as  the  heavy 
sacks  of  the  Germans,  which  are  all  bound  with 
straps  and  covered  on  the  back  side  with  un- 
dressed red  bullock's  hide. 
[211 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Until  now  we  had  seen,  in  all  the  silent, 
ruined  village,  no  human  being.  The  place 
fairly  ached  with  emptiness.  Cats  sat  on  the 
doorsteps  or  in  the  windows,  and  presently 
from  a  barn  we  heard  imprisoned  beasts  lowing 
dismally.  Cows  were  there,  with  agonized 
udders  and,  penned  away  from  them,  famishing 
calves;  but  there  were  no  dogs.  We  already 
had  remarked  this  fact — that  in  every  desolated 
village  cats  were  thick  enough;  but  in- 
variably the  sharp-nosed,  wolfish-looking  Bel- 
gian dogs  had  disappeared  along  with  their 
masters.  And  it  was  so  in  Montignies  St. 
Christophe. 

On  a  roadside  barricade  of  stones,  chinked 
with  sods  of  turf — a  breastwork  the  French 
probably  had  erected  before  the  fight  and 
which  the  Germans  had  kicked  half  down — I 
counted  three  cats,  seated  side  by  side,  washing 
their  faces  sedately  and  soberly. 

It  was  just  after  we  had  gone  by  the  barricade 
that,  in  a  shed  behind  the  riddled  shell  of  a 
house,  which  was  almost  the  last  house  of  the 
town,  one  of  our  party  saw  an  old,  a  very  old, 
woman,  who  peered  out  at  us  through  a  break 
in  the  wall.  He  called  out  to  her  in  French, 
but  she  never  answered — only  continued  to 
watch  him  from  behind  her  shelter.  He 
started  toward  her  and  she  disappeared 
noiselessly,  without  having  spoken  a  word. 
She  was  the  only  living  person  we  saw  in 
that  town. 

[22] 


A    LITTLE    VILLAGE 


Just  beyond  the  town,  though,  we  met  a 
wagon — a  furniture  dealer's  wagon — from  some 
larger  community,  which  had  been  impressed 
by  the  Belgian  authorities,  military  or  civil, 
for  ambulance  service.  A  jaded  team  of  horses 
drew  it,  and  white  flags  with  red  crosses  in 
their  centers  drooped  over  the  wheels,  fore  and 
aft.  One  man  led  the  near  horse  by  the  bit 
and  two  other  men  walked  behind  the  wagon. 
All  three  of  them  had  Red  Cross  brassards  on 
the  sleeves  of  their  coats. 

The  wagon  had  a  hood  on  it,  but  was  open 
at  both  ends.  Overhauling  it  we  saw  that  it 
contained  two  dead  soldiers — French  foot- 
soldiers.  The  bodies  rested  side  by  side  on 
the  wagon  bed.  Their  feet  somehow  were 
caught  up  on  the  wagon  seat  so  that  their 
stiff  legs,  in  the  baggy  red  pants,  slanted  up- 
ward, and  the  two  dead  men  had  the  look  of 
being  about  to  glide  backward  and  out  of  the 
wagon. 

The  blue-clad  arms  of  one  of  them  were 
twisted  upward  in  a  half -arc,  encircling  nothing; 
and  as  the  wheels  jolted  over  the  rutted  cobbles 
these  two  bent  arms  joggled  and  swayed 
drunkenly.  The  other's  head  was  canted  back 
so  that,  as  we  passed,  we  looked  right  into  his 
face.  It  was  a  young  face — we  could  tell  that 
much,  even  through  the  mask  of  caked  mud 
on  the  drab-white  skin — and  it  might  once 
have  been  a  comely  face.  It  was  not  comely 
novf. 

[231 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Peering  into  the  wagon  we  saw  that  the  dead 
man's  face  had  been  partly  shot  or  shorn  away — 
the  lower  jaw  was  gone;  so  that  it  had  become 
an  abominable  thing  to  look  on.  These  two  had 
been  men  the  day  before.  Now  they  were  car- 
rion and  would  be  treated  as  such;  for  as  we 
looked  back  we  saw  the  wagon  turn  off  the  high 
road  into  a  field  where  the  wild  red  poppies, 
like  blobs  of  red  blood,  grew  thick  between 
rows  of  neglected  sugar  beets. 

We  stopped  and  watched.  The  wagon 
bumped  through  the  beet  patch  to  where,  at 
the  edge  of  a  thicket,  a  trench  had  been  dug. 
The  diggers  were  two  peasants  in  blouses,  who 
stood  alongside  the  ridge  of  raw  upturned  earth 
at  the  edge  of  the  hole,  in  the  attitude  of  figures 
in  a  painting  by  Millet.  Their  spades  were 
speared  upright  into  the  mound  of  fresh  earth. 
Behind  them  a  stenciling  of  poplars  rose  against 
the  sky  line. 

We  saw  the  bodies  lifted  out  of  the  wagon. 
We  saw  them  slide  into  the  shallow  grave,  and 
saw  the  two  diggers  start  at  their  task  of 
filling  in  the  hole. 

Not  until  then  did  it  occur  to  any  one  of 
us  that  we  had  not  spoken  to  the  men  in 
charge  of  the  wagon,  or  they  to  us.  There  was 
one  detached  house,  not  badly  battered,  along- 
side the  road  at  the  lower  edge  of  the  field 
where  the  burial  took  place.  It  had  a  shield 
on  its  front  wall  bearing  the  Belgian  arms  and 
words  to  denote  that  it  was  a  customs  house. 
[24] 


A    LITTLE    VILLAGE 


A  glance  at  our  map  showed  us  that  at  this 
point  the  French  boundary  came  up  in  a 
V-shaped  point  almost  to  the  road.  Had  the 
gravediggers  picked  a  spot  fifty  yards  farther 
on  for  digging  their  trench,  those  two  dead 
Frenchmen  would  have  rested  in  the  soil  of 
their  own  country. 

The  sun  was  almost  down  by  now,  and  its 
slanting  rays  slid  lengthwise  through  the 
elm-tree  aisles  along  our  route.  Just  as  it 
disappeared  we  met  a  string  of  refugees — men, 
women  and  children — all  afoot,  all  bearing 
pitiably  small  bundles.  They  limped  along 
silently  in  a  straggling  procession.  None  of 
them  was  weeping;  none  of  them  apparently 
had  been  weeping.  During  the  past  ten  days 
I  had  seen  thousands  of  such  refugees,  and  I 
had  yet  to  hear  one  of  them  cry  out  or  com- 
plain or  protest. 

These  who  passed  us  now  were  like  that. 
Their  heavy  peasant  faces  expressed  dumb  be- 
wilderment— nothing  else.  They  went  on  up 
the  road  into  the  gathering  dusk  as  we  went 
down,  and  almost  at  once  the  sound  of  their 
clunking  tread  died  out  behind  us.  Without 
knowing  certainly,  we  nevertheless  imagined 
they  were  the  dwellers  of  Montignies  St. 
Christophe  going  back  to  the  sorry  shells 
that  had  been  their  homes. 

An  hour  later  we  passed  through  the  back 
lines   of   the   German   camp   and   entered   the 
town  of  Beaumont,  to  find  that  the  General 
1251 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Staff  of  a  German  army  corps  was  quartered 
there  for  the  night,  and  that  the  main  force  of 
the  column,  after  sharp  fighting,  had  already 
advanced  well  beyond  the  frontier.  France  was 
invaded. 


[26] 


CHAPTER  II 
TO  WAR  IN  A  TAXICAB 


IN  a  taxicab  we  went  to  look  for  this  war. 
There  were  four  of  us,  not  counting  the 
chauffeur,  who  did  not  count.  It  was  a 
regular  taxicab,  with  a  meter  on  it,  and  a 
little  red  metal  flag  which  might  be  turned  up 
or  turned  down,  depending  on  whether  the  cab 
was  engaged  or  at  liberty ;  and  he  was  a  regular 
chauffeur. 

We,  the  passengers,  wore  straw  hats  and 
light  suits,  and  carried  no  baggage.  No  one 
would  ever  have  taken  us  for  war  correspon- 
dents out  looking  for  war.  So  we  went;  and, 
just  when  we  were  least  expecting  it,  we  found 
that  war.  Perhaps  it  would  be  more  exact  to 
say  it  found  us.  We  were  four  days  getting 
back  to  Brussels,  still  wearing  our  straw  hats, 
but  without  any  taxicab.  The  fate  of  that 
taxicab  is  going  to  be  one  of  the  unsolved 
mysteries  of  the  German  invasion  of  Bel- 
gium. 

[27] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


From  the  hour  when  the  steamer  St.  Paul 
left  New  York,  carrying  probably  the  most 
mixed  assortment  of  passengers  that  traveled 
on  a  single  ship  since  Noah  sailed  the  Ark,  we 
on  board  expected  hourly  to  sight  something 
that  would  make  us  spectators  of  actual  hos- 
tilities. The  papers  that  morning  were  full  of 
rumors  of  an  engagement  between  English 
ships  and  German  ships  somewhere  off  the 
New  England  coast. 

Daily  we  searched  the  empty  seas  until  our 
eyes  hurt  us;  but,  except  that  we  had  one 
ship's  concert  and  one  brisk  gale,  and  that 
just  before  dusk  on  the  fifth  day  out,  the 
weather  being  then  gray  and  misty,  we  saw 
wallowing  along,  hull  down  on  the  starboard 
bovv',  an  English  cruiser  with  two  funnels, 
nothing  happened  at  all.  Even  when  we  landed 
at  Liverpool  nothing  happened  to  suggest  that 
we  had  reached  a  country  actively  engaged  in 
war,  unless  you  would  list  the  presence  of  a 
few  khaki-clad  soldiers  on  the  landing  stage 
and  the  painful  absence  of  porters  to  handle 
our  baggage  as  evidences  of  the  same.  I  re- 
member seeing  Her  Grace  the  Duchess  of 
Marlborough  sitting  hour  after  hour  on  a  bag- 
gage truck,  waiting  for  her  heavy  luggage  to 
come  off  the  tardy  tender  and  up  the  languid 
chute  into  the  big  dusty  dockhouse. 

I  remember,  also,  seeing  women,  with  their 
hats  flopping  down  in  their  faces  and  their  hair 
all  streaming,  dragging  huge  trunks  across  the 
[281 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


floor;  and  if  all  of  us  had  not  been  in  the  same 
distressful  fix  we  could  have  appreciated  the 
humor  of  the  spectacle  of  a  portly  high  dig- 
nitary of  the  United  States  Medical  Corps 
shoving  a  truck  piled  high  with  his  belongings, 
and  shortly  afterward,  with  the  help  of  his 
own  wife,  loading  them  on  the  roof  of  an  infirm 
and  wheezy  taxicab. 

From  Liverpool  across  to  London  we  traveled 
through  a  drowsy  land  burdened  with  bumper 
crops  of  grain,  and  watched  the  big  brown 
hares  skipping  among  the  oat  stacks;  and  late 
at  night  we  came  to  London.  In  London 
next  day  there  were  more  troops  about  than 
common,  and  recruits  were  drilling  on  the 
gravel  walks  back  of  Somerset  House;  and  the 
people  generally  moved  with  a  certain  sober 
restraint,  as  people  do  who  feel  the  weight  of 
a  heavy  and  an  urgent  responsibility.  Other- 
wise the  London  of  wartime  seemed  the  Lon- 
don of  peacetime. 

So  within  a  day  our  small  party,  still  seeking 
to  slip  into  the  wings  of  the  actual  theater  of 
events  rather  than  to  stay  so  far  back  behind 
the  scenes,  was  aboard  a  Channel  ferryboat 
bound  for  Ostend,  and  having  for  fellow  trav- 
elers a  few  Englishmen,  a  tall  blond  princess  of 
some  royal  house  of  Northern  Europe,  and  any 
number  of  Belgians  going  home  to  enlist.  In 
the  Straits  of  Dover,  an  hour  or  so  out  from 
Folkestone,  we  ran  through  a  fleet  of  British 
warships  guarding  the  narrow  roadstead  be- 
[29] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


tween  France  and  England ;  and  a  torpedo-boat 
destroyer  sidled  up  and  took  a  look  at  us. 

Just  off  Dunkirk  a  French  scout  ship  talked 
with  us  by  the  language  of  the  whipping  signal 
flags;  but  the  ordinary  Channel  craft  came  and 
went  without  hindrance  or  seeming  fear,  and 
again  it  was  hard  for  us  to  make  ourselves  be- 
lieve that  we  had  reached  a  zone  where  the 
physical,  tangible  business  of  war  went  forward. 

And  Ostend  and,  after  Ostend,  the  Belgian 
interior — those  were  disappointments  too;  for 
at  Ostend  bathers  disported  on  the  long,  shin- 
ing beach  and  children  played  about  the  sanded 
stretch.  And,  though  there  were  soldiers  in 
sight,  one  always  expects  soldiers  in  European 
countries.  No  one  asked  to  see  the  passports 
we  had  brought  with  us,  and  the  customs  officers 
gave  our  hand  baggage  the  most  perfunctory 
of  examinations.  Hardly  five  minutes  had 
elapsed  after  our  landing  before  we  were 
steaming  away  on  our  train  through  a  landscape 
which,  to  judge  by  its  appearance,  might  have 
known  only  peace,  and  naught  but  peace,  for 
a  thousand  placid  years. 

It  is  true  we  saw  during  that  ride  few  able- 
bodied  male  adults,  either  in  the  towns  through 
which  we  rushed  or  in  the  country.  There  M'ere 
priests  occasionally  and  old,  infirm  men  or  half- 
grown  boys;  but  of  men  in  their  prime  the  land 
had  been  drained  to  fill  up  the  army  of  defense 
then  on  the  other  side  of  Belgium — toward 
Germany — striving  to  hold  the  invaders  in 
[30] 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXI C AC 


check  until  the  French  and  EngHsh  might  come 
up.  The  yellow-ripe  grain  stood  in  the  fields, 
heavy-headed  and  drooping  with  seed.  The 
russet  pears  and  red  apples  bent  the  limbs  of 
the  fruit  trees  almost  to  earth.  Every  visible 
inch  of  soil  was  under  cultivation,  of  the  pain- 
fully intensive  European  sort;  and  there  re- 
mained behind  to  garner  the  crops  only  the 
peasant  women  and  a  few  crippled,  aged  grand- 
sires.  It  was  hard  for  us  to  convince  ourselves 
that  any  event  out  of  the  ordinary  beset  this 
country.  No  columns  of  troops  passed  along 
the  roads;  no  camps  of  tents  lifted  their  peaked 
tops  above  the  hedges.  In  seventy-odd  miles 
we  encountered  one  small  detachment  of  sol- 
diers— they  were  at  a  railroad  station — and 
one  Red  Cross  flag. 

As  for  Brussels — why,  Brussels  at  first  glance 
was  more  like  a  city  making  a  fete  than  the 
capital  of  a  nation  making  war.  The  flags 
which  were  displayed  everywhere;  the  crowds 
in  the  square  before  the  railroad  station;  the 
multitudes  of  boy  scouts  running  about;  the 
uniforms  of  Belgian  volunteers  and  regulars; 
the  Garde  Civique,  in  their  queer-looking  cos- 
tumes, with  funny  little  derby  hats,  all  braid- 
trimmed — gave  to  the  place  a  holiday  air. 
After  nightfall,  when  the  people  of  Brussels 
flocked  to  the  sidewalk  cafes  and  sat  at  little 
round  tables  under  awnings,  drinking  light 
drinks  a  la  Parisienne,  this  impression  was 
heightened. 

[311 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


We  dined  in  the  open  air  ourselves,  jSnding 
the  prices  for  food  and  drink  to  be  both  mod- 
erate and  modest,  and  able  to  see  nothing  on 
the  surface  which  suggested  that  the  life  of 
these  people  had  been  seriously  disturbed. 
Two  significant  facts,  however,  did  obtrude 
themselves  on  us:  Every  minute  or  two,  as  we 
dined,  a  young  girl  or  an  old  gentleman  would 
come  to  us,  rattling  a  tin  receptacle  with  a  slot 
in  the  top  through  which  coins  for  the  aid  of 
the  widows  and  orphans  of  dead  soldiers 
might  be  dropped;  and  when  a  little  later 
we  rode  past  the  royal  palace  we  saw 
that  it  had  been  converted  into  a  big 
hospital  for  the  wounded.  That  night,  also, 
the  government  ran  away  to  Antwerp;  but 
of  this  we  knew  nothing  until  the  following 
morning. 

Next  day  we  heard  tales:  Uhlans  had  been 
seen  almost  in  the  suburbs ;  three  German  spies, 
disguised  as  nuns,  had  been  captured,  tried, 
convicted  and  were  no  longer  with  us;  sentries 
on  duty  outside  the  residence  of  the  American 
Minister  had  fired  at  a  German  aeroplane  dart- 
ing overhead;  French  troops  were  drawing  in 
to  the  northward  and  English  soldiers  were 
hurrying  up  from  the  south;  trainloads  of 
wounded  had  been  brought  in  under  cover  of 
the  night  and  distributed  among  the  improvised 
hospitals;  but,  conceding  these  things  to  be 
true,  we  knew  of  them  only  at  second  hand. 
By  the  evidence  of  what  we  ourselves  saw  we 
[32] 


TO   WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


were  able  to  note  few  shifts  in  the  superficial 
aspects  of  the  city. 

The  Garde  Civique  seemed  a  trifle  more 
numerous  than  it  had  been  the  evening  before; 
citizen  volunteers,  still  in  civilian  garb,  ap- 
peared on  the  streets  in  awkward  squads, 
carrying  their  guns  and  side  arms  clumsily; 
and  when,  in  Minister  Brand  Whitlock's  car,  we 
drove  out  the  beautiful  Avenue  Louise,  we  found 
soldiers  building  a  breast-high  barricade  across 
the  head  of  the  roadway  where  it  entered  the  Bois ; 
also,  they  were  weaving  barbed-wire  entangle- 
ments among  the  shade  trees.     That  was  all. 

And  then,  as  though  to  offset  these  added  sug- 
gestions of  danger,  we  saw  children  playing  about 
quietly  behind  the  piled  sand-bags,  guarded 
by  plump  Flemish  nursemaids,  and  smart  dog- 
carts constantly  passed  and  repassed  us,  filled 
with  well-dressed  women,  and  with  flowers 
stuck  in  the  whip-sockets. 

The  nearer  we  got  to  this  war  the  farther 
away  from  us  it  seemed  to  be.  We  began  to 
regard  it  as  an  elusive,  silent,  secretive,  hide- 
and-go-seek  war,  which  would  evade  us  always. 
We  resolved  to  pursue  it  into  the  country  to 
the  northward,  from  whence  the  Germans  were 
reported  to  be  advancing,  crushing  back  the 
outnumbered  Belgians  as  they  came  onward; 
but  when  we  tried  to  secure  a  laissez  passer  at 
the  gendarmerie,  where  until  then  an  accredited 
correspondent  might  get  himself  a  laissez 
passer,  we  bumped  into  obstacles. 
[33] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


In  an  inclosed  courtyard  behind  a  big  gray 
building,  among  loaded  wagons  of  supplies  and 
munching  cart  horses,  a  kitchen  table  teetered 
unsteadily  on  its  legs  on  the  rough  cobbles. 
On  the  table  were  pens  and  inkpots  and  coffee 
cups  and  beer  bottles  and  beer  glasses;  and 
about  it  sat  certain  unkempt  men  in  resplendent 
but  unbrushed  costumes.  Joseph  himself — the 
Joseph  of  the  coat  of  many  colors,  no  less — 
might  have  devised  the  uniforms  they  wore. 
With  that  setting  the  picture  they  made  there 
in  the  courtyard  was  suggestive  of  stage  scenes 
in  plays  of  the  French  Revolution. 

They  were  polite  enough,  these  piebald  gen- 
tlemen, and  they  considered  our  credentials 
with  an  air  of  mildly  courteous  interest;  but 
they  would  give  us  no  passes.  There  had  been 
an  order.  Who  had  issued  it,  or  why,  was  not 
for  us  to  know.  Going  away  from  there,  all 
downcast  and  disappointed,  we  met  a  French 
cavalryman.  He  limped  along  in  his  high 
dragoon  boots,  walking  with  the  wide-legged 
gait  of  one  who  had  bestraddled  leather  for 
many  hours  and  was  sore  from  it.  His  horse, 
which  he  led  by  the  bridle,  stumbled  with 
weariness.  A  proud  boy  scout  was  serving  as 
his  guide.  He  was  the  only  soldier  of  any 
army,  except  the  Belgian,  we  had  seen  so  far, 
and  we  halted  our  car  and  watched  him  until 
he  disappeared. 

However,  seeing  one  tired  French  dragoon 
was  not  seeing  the  war;  and  we  chafed  thai  night 
[34] 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


at  the  delay  which  kept  us  penned  as  prisoners 
in  this  handsome,  outwardly  quiet  city.  As  we 
figured  it  we  might  be  housed  up  here  for  days 
or  weeks  and  miss  all  the  operations  in  the  field. 
When  morning  came,  though,  we  discovered 
that  the  bars  were  down  again,  and  that  cer- 
tificates signed  by  the  American  consul  would 
be  sufficient  to  carry  us  as  far  as  the  outlying 
suburbs  at  least. 

Securing  these  precious  papers,  then,  without 
delay  we  chartered  a  rickety  red  taxicab  for 
the  day;  and  piling  in  we  told  the  driver  to 
take  us  eastward  as  far  as  he  could  go  before 
the  outposts  turned  us  back.  He  took  us, 
therefore,  at  a  buzzing  clip  through  the  Bois, 
along  one  flank  of  the  magnificent  Forest  of 
Soigne,  with  its  miles  of  green-trunked  beech 
trees,  and  by  way  of  the  royal  park  of  Ter- 
vueren.  From  the  edge  of  the  thickly  settled 
district  onward  we  passed  barricade  after 
barricade — some  built  of  newly  felled  trees; 
some  of  street  cars  drawn  across  the  road  in 
double  rows;  some  of  street  cobbles  chinked 
with  turf;  and  some  of  barbed  wire — all  of 
them,  even  to  our  inexperienced  eyes,  seeming 
but  flimsy  defenses  to  interpose  against  a 
force  of  any  size  or  determination.  But  the 
Belgians  appeared  to  set  great  store  by  these 
playthings. 

Behind  each  of  them  was  a  mixed  group  of 
soldiers  —  Garde  Civique,  gendarmes  and 
burgher  volunteers.  These  latter  mainly  car- 
[351 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


ried  shotguns  and  wore  floppy  blue  caps  and 
long  blue  blouses,  which  buttoned  down  their 
backs  with  big  horn  buttons,  like  little  girls' 
pinafores.  There  was,  we  learned,  a  touch  of 
sentiment  about  the  sudden  appearance  of 
those  most  unsoldierly  looking  vestments.  In 
the  revolution  of  1830,  when  the  men  of 
Brussels  fought  the  Hollanders  all  morning, 
stopped  for  dinner  at  midday  and  then  fought 
again  all  afternoon,  and  by  alternately  fighting 
and  eating  wore  out  the  enemy  and  won  their 
national  independence,  they  wore  such  caps 
and  such  back-buttoning  blouses.  And  so  all 
night  long  women  in  the  hospitals  had  sat  up 
cutting  out  and  basting  together  the  garments 
of  glory  for  their  menfolk. 

No  one  offered  to  turn  us  back,  and  only 
once  or  twice  did  a  sentry  insist  on  looking  at 
our  passes.  In  the  light  of  fuller  experiences  I 
know  now  that  when  a  city  is  about  to  fall 
into  an  enemy's  hands  the  authorities  relax 
their  vigilance  and  freely  permit  noncombatants 
to  depart  therefrom,  presumably  on  the  as- 
sumption that  the  fewer  individuals  there 
are  in  the  place  when  the  conqueror  does  come 
the  fewer  the  problems  of  caring  for  the  resi- 
dent population  will  be.  But  we  did  not  know 
this  mighty  significant  fact;  and,  suspecting 
nothing,  the  four  innocents  drove  blithely  on 
until  the  city  lay  behind  us  and  the  country 
lay  before  us,  brooding  in  the  bright  sunlight 
and  all  empty  and  peaceful,  except  for  thin 
[36] 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


scattering  detachments  of  gayly  clad  Belgian 
infantrymen  through  which  we  passed. 

Once  or  twice  tired,  dirty  stragglers,  lying 
at  the  roadside,  raised  a  cheer  as  they  recog- 
nized the  small  American  flag  that  fluttered 
from  our  taxi's  door;  and  once  we  gave  a  lift 
to  a  Belgian  bicycle  courier,  who  had  grown 
too  leg-weary  to  pedal  his  machine  another 
inch.  He  was  the  color  of  the  dust  through 
which  he  had  ridden,  and  his  face  under  its 
dirt  mask  was  thin  and  drawn  with  fatigue; 
but  his  racial  enthusiasm  endured,  and  when 
we  dropped  him  he  insisted  on  shaking  hands 
with  all  of  us,  and  offering  us  a  drink  out  of  a 
very  warm  and  very  grimy  bottle  of  something 
or  other. 

All  of  a  sudden,  rounding  a  bend,  we  came 
on  a  little  valley  with  one  of  the  infrequent 
Belgian  brooks  bisecting  it;  and  this  whole 
valley  was  full  of  soldiers.  There  must  have 
been  ten  thousand  of  them — cavalry,  foot,  ar- 
tillery, baggage  trains,  and  all.  Quite  near  us 
was  ranged  a  battery  of  small  rapid-fire  guns; 
and  the  big  rawboned  dogs  that  had  hauled 
them  there  were  lying  under  the  wicked-looking 
little  pieces.  We  had  heard  a  lot  about  the 
dog-drawn  guns  of  the  Belgians,  but  these 
were  the  first  of  them  we  had  seen. 

Lines  of  cavalrymen  were  skirting  crosswise 
over  the  low  hill  at  the  other  side  of  the  valley, 
and  against  the  sky  line  the  figures  of  horses 
and  men  stood  out  clear  and  fine.    It  all  seemed  <■ 
[37] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


a  splendid  martial  sight;  but  afterward,  com- 
paring this  force  with  the  army  into  whose 
front  we  were  to  blunder  unwittingly,  we 
thought  of  it  as  a  little  handful  of  toy  soldiers 
playing  at  war.  We  never  heard  what  became 
of  those  Belgians.  Presumably  at  the  advance 
of  the  Germans  coming  down  on  them  count- 
lessly,  like  an  Old  Testament  locust  plague, 
they  fell  back  and,  going  round  Brussels,  went 
northward  tow^ard  Antv/erp,  to  join  the  main 
body  of  their  own  troops.  Or  they  may  have 
reached  the  lines  of  the  Allies,  to  the  south 
and  westward,  toward  the  French  frontier.  One 
guess  would  be  as  good  as  the  other. 

One  of  the  puzzling  things  about  the  early 
mid-August  stages  of  the  war  vv^as  the  almost 
instantaneous  rapidity  with  which  the  Belgian 
army,  as  an  army,  disintegrated  and  vanished. 
To-day  it  was  here,  giving  a  good  account  of 
itself  against  tremendous  odds,  spending  itself 
in  driblets  to  give  the  Allies  a  chance  to  get  up. 
To-morrow  it  was  utterly  gone. 

Still  without  being  halted  or  delayed  we  went 
briskly  on.  We  had  topped  the  next  rise 
commanding  the  next  valley,  and — except  for 
a  few  stragglers  and  some  skirmishers — the 
Belgians  were  quite  out  of  sight,  when  our 
driver  stopped  with  an  abruptness  which  piled 
his  four  passengers  in  a  heap  and  pointed  off 
to  the  northwest,  a  queer,  startled,  frightened 
look  on  his  broad  Flemish  face.  There  was 
smoke  there  along  the  horizon — much  smoke, 
[381 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


both  white  and  dark;  and,  even  as  the  throb 
of  the  motor  died  away  to  a  purr,  the  sound 
of  big  guns  came  to  us  in  a  faint  rumbhng,  borne 
from  a  long  way  off  by  the  breeze. 

It  was  the  first  time  any  one  of  us,  except 
McCutcheon,  had  ever  heard  a  gun  fired  in 
battle;  and  it  was  the  first  intimation  to 
any  of  us  that  the  Germans  were  so  near. 
Barring  only  venturesome  mounted  scouts 
we  had  supposed  the  German  columns  were 
many  kilometers  away.  A  brush  between 
skirmishers  was  the  best  we  had  counted  on 
seeing. 

Right  here  we  parted  from  our  taxi  driver. 
He  made  it  plain  to  us,  partly  by  words  and 
partly  by  signs,  that  he  personally  was  not 
looking  for  any  war.  Plainly  he  was  one  who 
specialized  in  peace  and  the  pursuits  of  peace. 
Not  even  the  proffered  bribe  of  a  doubled  or  a 
tripled  fare  availed  to  move  him  one  rod  toward 
those  smoke  clouds.  He  turned  his  car  round 
so  that  it  faced  toward  Brussels,  and  there  he 
agreed  to  stay,  caring  for  our  light  overcoats, 
until  we  should  return  to  him.  I  wonder  how 
long  he  really  did  stay. 

And  I  have  wondered,  in  idle  moments  since, 
what  he  did  with  our  overcoats.  Maybe  he 
fled  with  the  automobile  containing  two  English 
moving-picture  operators  which  passed  us  at 
that  moment,  and  from  which  floated  back  a 
shouted  warning  that  the  Germans  were  com- 
ing. Maybe  he  stayed  too  long  and  was 
\S9] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


gobbled  up — but  I  doubt  it.  He  had  an  in- 
stinct for  safety. 

As  we  went  forward  afoot  the  sound  of  the 
firing  grew  clearer  and  more  distinct.  We 
could  now  hear  quite  plainly  the  grunting  belch 
of  the  big  pieces  and,  in  between,  the  chattering 
voice  of  rapid-fire  guns.  Long-extended,  stam- 
mering, staccato  sounds,  which  we  took  to 
mean  rifle  firing,  came  to  our  ears  also.  Among 
ourselves  we  decided  that  the  white  smoke 
came  from  the  guns  and  the  black  from  burning 
buildings  or  hay  ricks.  x\lso  we  agreed  that  the 
fighting  was  going  on  beyond  the  spires  and 
chimneys  of  a  village  on  the  crest  of  the  hill 
immediately  ahead  of  us.  We  could  make  out 
a  white  church  and,  on  past  it,  lines  of  gray 
stone  cottages. 

In  these  deductions  we  were  partly  right 
and  partly  wrong;  we  had  hit  on  the  approxi- 
mate direction  of  the  fighting, /but  it  was  not 
a  village  that  lay  before  us.  What  we  saw 
was  an  outlying  section  of  the  citj^  of  Lou  vain, 
a  place  of  fifty  thousand  inhabitants,  destined 
within  ten  days  to  be  turned  into  a  waste  of 
sacked  ruins. 

There  were  fields  of  tall,  rank  winter  cab- 
bages on  each  side  of  the  road,  and  among  the 
big  green  leaves  we  saw  bright  red  dots.  We 
had  to  look  a  second  time  before  we  realized 
that  these  dots  were  not  the  blooms  of  the  wild 
red  poppies  tha,t  are  so  abundant  in  Belgium, 
but  the  red-tipped  caps  of  Belgian  soldiers 
[40] 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


squatting  in  the  cover  of  the  plants.  None  of 
them  looked  toward  us;  all  of  them  looked 
toward  those  mounting  walls  of  smoke. 

Now,  too,  we  became  aware  of  something 
else — aware  o:  a  procession  that  advanced 
toward  us.  It  was  the  head  of  a  two-mile  long 
line  of  refugees,  fleeing  from  destroyed  or 
threatened  districts  on  beyond.  At  first,  in 
scattered,  straggling  groups,  and  then  in  solid 
columns,  they  passed  us  unendingly,  we  going 
one  Tv'ay,  they  going  the  other.  Mainly  they 
were  afoot,  though  now  and  then  a  farm  wagon 
would  bulk  above  the  weaving  ranks;  and  it 
would  be  loaded  with  bedding  and  furniture 
and  packed  to  overflowing  with  old  women 
and  babies.  One  wagon  lacked  horses  to  draw 
it,  and  six  men  pulled  in  front  while  two  men 
pushed  at  the  back  to  propel  it.  Some  of  the 
fleeing  multitude  looked  like  townspeople,  but 
the  majority  plainly  were  peasants.  And  of 
these  latter  at  least  half  w^ore  wooden  shoes 
so  that  the  sound  of  their  feet  on  the  cobbled 
roadbed  made  a  clattering  chorus  that  at  times 
almost  drow^ned  out  the  hiccuping  voices  of  the 
guns  behind  them. 

Occasionally  there  would  be  a  man  shoving 
a  barrow,  with  a  baby  and  possibly  a  muddle  of 
bedclothing  in  the  barrow  together.  Every 
woman  carried  a  burden  of  some  sort,  w^hich 
might  be  a  pack  tied  in  a  cloth  or  a  cheap 
valise  stuffed  to  bursting,  or  a  baby — though 
generally  it  was  a  baby;  and  nearly  every  man, 
[41] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


in  addition  to  his  load  of  belongings,  had  an 
umbrella  under  his  arm.  In  this  rainy  land  the 
carrying  of  umbrellas  is  a  habit  not  easily 
shaken  off;  and,  besides,  most  of  these  people 
had  slept  out  at  least  one  night  and  would 
probably  sleep  out  another,  and  an  umbrella 
makes  a  sort  of  shelter  if  you  have  no  better. 
I  figure  I  saw  a  thousand  umbrellas  if  I  saw  one, 
and  the  sight  of  them  gave  a  strangely  incon- 
gruous touch  to  the  thing. 

Yes,  it  gave  a  grotesque  touch  to  it.  The 
spectacle  inclined  one  to  laugh,  almost  making 
one  forget  for  a  moment  that  here  in  this  spec- 
tacle one  beheld  the  misery  of  war  made  con- 
crete; that  in  the  lorn  state  of  these  poor  folks 
its  effects  v/ere  focused  and  made  vivid;  that, 
while  in  some  way  it  touched  every  living 
creature  on  the  globe,  here  it  touched  them 
directly. 

All  the  children,  except  the  sick  ones  and  the 
very  young  ones,  walked,  and  most  of  them 
carried  small  bundles  too.  I  saw  one  little 
girl,  who  was  perhaps  six  years  old,  with  a 
heavy  wooden  clock  in  her  arms.  The  legs  of 
the  children  wavered  under  them  sometimes 
from  weakness  or  maybe  weariness,  but  I  did 
not  hear  a  single  child  whimper,  or  see  a 
single  woman  who  wept,  or  hear  a  single  man 
speak  above  a  half  whisper. 

They  drifted  on  by  us,  silent  all,  except  for 
the  sound  of  feet  and  wheels;  and,  as  I  read 
the  looks  on  their  faces,  those  faces  expressed 
[421 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


no  emotion  except  a  certain  numbed,  resigned, 
bovine  bewilderment.  Far  back  in  the  line 
we  met  two  cripples,  hobbling  along  side  by 
side  as  though  for  company;  and  still  farther 
back  a  Belgian  soldier  came,  like  a  rear  guard, 
with  his  gun  swung  over  his  back  and  his 
sweaty  black  hair  hanging  down  in  his  eyes. 

In  an  undertone  he  was  apparently  explaining 
something  to  a  little  bow-legged  man  in  black, 
with  spectacles,  who  trudged  along  in  his 
company.  He  was  the  lone  soldier  we  saw 
among  the  refugees — all  the  others  were  civ- 
ilians. 

Only  one  man  in  all  the  line  hailed  us. 
Speaking  so  low  that  we  could  scarcely  catch 
his  words,  he  said  in  broken  English: 

"M'sieurs,  the  French  are  in  Brussels,  are 
they  not.?" 

"No,"  we  told  him. 

"The  British,  then — they  must  be  there  by 
now-f^ 

"No;  the  British  aren't  there,  either." 

He  shook  his  head,  as  though  puzzled,  and 
started  on. 

"How  far  away  are  the  Germans?"  we  asked 
him. 

He  shook  his  head  again. 

"I  cannot  say,"  he  answered;  "but  I  think 
they  must  be  close  behind  us.  I  had  a  brother 
in  the  army  at  Liege,"  he  added,  apparently 
apropos  of  nothing.  And  then  he  went  on,  still 
shaking  his  head  and  with  both  arms  tightly 
[43] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


clasped  round  a  big  bundle  done  up  in  cloth, 
which  he  held  against  his  breast. 

Very  suddenly  the  procession  broke  off,  as 
though  it  had  been  chopped  in  two;  and  almost 
immediately  after  that  the  road  turned  into  a 
street  and  we  were  between  solid  lines  of  small 
cottages,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  people 
who  fluttered  about  with  the  distracted  aim- 
lessness  of  agitated  barnyard  fowls.  They 
babbled  among  themselves,  paying  small  heed 
to  us.  An  automobile  tore  through  the  street 
with  its  horn  blaring,  and  raced  by  us,  going 
toward  Brussels  at  forty  miles  an  hour.  A  well- 
dressed  man  in  the  front  seat  yelled  out  some- 
thing to  us  as  he  whizzed  past,  but  the  words 
were  swallowed  up  in  the  roaring  of  his  engine. 

Of  our  party  only  one  spoke  French,  and 
he  spoke  it  indifferently.  We  sought,  there- 
fore, to  find  some  one  who  understood  English. 
In  a  minute  we  saw  the  black  robe  of  a  priest; 
and  here,  through  the  crowd,  calm  and  dignified 
where  all  others  were  fairly  befuddled  with 
excitement,  he  came — a  short  man  with  a 
fuzzy  red  beard  and  a  bright  blue  eye. 

We  hailed  him,  and  the  man  who  spoke  a 
little  French  explained  our  case.  At  once  he 
turned  about  and  took  us  into  a  side  street; 
and  even  in  their  present  state  the  men  and 
women  who  met  us  remembered  their  manners 
and  pulled  off  their  hats  and  bowed  before 
him. 

At  a  door  let  into  a  high  stone  wall  he 
[441 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAli 


stopped  and  rang  a  bell.  A  brother  in  a  brown 
robe  came  and  unbarred  the  gate  for  us,  and 
our  guide  led  us  under  an  arched  alley  and  out 
again  into  the  open;  and  behold  we  were  in 
another  world  from  the  little  world  of  panic 
that  we  had  just  left.  There  was  a  high- 
walled  inclosure  with  a  neglected  tennis  court 
in  the  middle,  and  pear  and  plum  trees  burdened 
with  fruit;  and  at  the  far  end,  beneath  a  little 
arbor  of  vines,  four  priests  were  sitting  together. 

At  sight  of  us  they  rose  and  came  to  us,  and 
shook  hands  all  round.  Almost  before  we  knew 
it  we  were  in  a  bare  little  room  behind  the 
ancient  Church  of  Saint  Jacques,  and  one  of  the 
fathers  was  showing  us  a  map  in  order  that  we 
might  better  understand  the  lay  of  the  land; 
and  another  was  uncorking  a  bottle  of  good 
red  wine,  which  he  brought  up  from  the 
cellar,  with  a  halo  of  mold  on  the  cork  and  a 
mantle  of  cobwebs  on  its  sloping  shoulders. 

It  seemed  that  the  Rev.  Dom.  Marie-Joseph 
Montaigne — I  give  the  name  that  was  on  his 
card — could  speak  a  little  English.  He  told 
us  haltingly  that  the  smoke  we  had  seen  came 
from  a  scene  of  fighting  som.ewhere  to  the  east- 
ward of  Lou  vain.  He  understood  that  the 
Prussians  were  quite  near,  but  he  had  seen  none 
himself  and  did  not  expect  they  would  enter 
the  town  before  nightfall.  As  for  the  firing, 
that  appeared  to  have  ceased.  And,  sure 
enough,  when  we  listened  we  could  no  longer 
catch  the  sound  of  the  big  guns.  Nor  did  we 
[45  J 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


hear  tliem  again  during  that  day.  Over  his 
glass  the  priest  spoke  in  his  faulty  English, 
stopping  often  to  feel  for  a  word;  and  when  he 
had  finished  his  face  worked  and  quivered 
with  the  emotion  he  felt. 

"This  war — it  is  a  most  terrible  thing  that 
it  should  come  on  Belgium,  eh.^^  Our  little 
country  had  no  quarrel  with  any  great  country. 
We  desired  only  that  Vv^e  should  be  left  alone. 

"Our  people  here — they  are  not  bad  people. 
I  tell  you  they  are  very  good  people.  All  the 
week  they  work  and  work,  and  on  Sunday  they 
go  to  church;  and  then  maybe  they  take  a  little 
walk. 

"You  Americans  now — you  come  from  a 
very  great  country.  Surely,  if  the  Vv'orst  should 
come  America  v/ill  not  let  our  country  perish 
from  off  the  earth,  eh!    Is  not  that  so?" 

Fifteen  minutes  later  we  were  out  again  facing 
the  dusty  little  square  of  Saint  Jacques;  and 
now  of  a  sudden  peace  seemed  to  have  fallen 
on  the  place.  The  wagons  of  a  little  traveling 
circus  Vvere  ranged  in  the  middle  of  the  square 
with  no  one  about  to  guard  them;  and  across 
the  way  was  a  small  tavern. 

All  together  we  discovered  we  were  hungry. 
We  had  had  bread  and  cheese  and  coffee,  and 
were  lighting  some  very  bad  native  cigars, 
when  the  landlord  burst  in  on  us,  saying  in  a 
quavering  voice  that  some  one  passing  had  told 
him  a  squad  of  seven  German  troopers  had  been 
seen  in  the  next  street  but  one.  He  made  a 
[461 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


gesture  as  though  to  invoke  the  mercy  of 
Heaven  on  us  all,  and  ran  out  again,  casting 
a  carpet  shpper  in  his  flight  and  leaving  it 
behind  him  on  the  floor. 

So  we  followed,  not  in  the  least  believing 
that  any  Germans  had  really  been  sighted;  but 
in  the  street  we  saw  a  group  of  perhaps  fifty 
Belgian  soldiers  running  up  a  narrov/  sideway, 
trailing  their  gun  butts  behind  them  on  the 
stones.  We  figured  they  v/ere  hurrying  for- 
ward to  the  other  side  of  town  to  help  hold 
back  the  enemy. 

A  minute  later  seven  or  eight  more  soldiers 
crossed  the  road  ahead  of  us  and  darted  up 
an  alley  with  the  air  and  haste  of  men  de- 
sirous of  being  speedily  out  of  sight.  We  had 
gone  perhaps  fifty  feet  beyond  the  mouth  of 
this  alley  when  two  men,  one  on  horseback 
and  one  on  a  bicycle,  rode  slowly  and  sedately 
out  of  another  alley,  parallel  to  the  first  one, 
and  swung  about  with  their  backs  to  us. 

I  imagine  we  had  watched  the  newcomers 
for  probably  fifty  seconds  before  it  dawned  on 
any  of  us  that  they  wore  gray  helmets  and  gray 
coats,  and  carried  arms— and  were  Germans. 
Precisely  at  that  moment  they  both  turned  so 
that  they  faced  us;  and  the  man  on  horseback 
lifted  a  carbine  from  a  holster  and  half  swung 
it  in  our  direction. 

Realization  came  to  us  that  here  we  were, 
pocketed.     There  were  armed  Belgians  in  an 
alley  behind  us   and  armed   Germans  in  the 
[47] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


street  before  us;  and  we  were  nicely  in  between. 
If  shooting  started  the  enemies  might  miss 
each  other,  but  they  could  not  very  well  miss 
us.  Two  of  our  party  found  a  courtyard  and 
ran  through  it.  The  third  pressed  close  up 
against  a  house  front  and  I  made  for  the  half- 
open  door  of  a  shop. 

Just  as  I  reached  it  a  woman  on  the  inside 
slammed  it  in  my  face  and  locked  it.  I  never 
expect  to  see  her  again;  but  that  does  not  mean 
that  I  ever  expect  to  forgive  her.  The  next 
door  stood  open,  and  from  within  its  shelter 
I  faced  about  to  watch  for  what  might  befall. 
Nothing  befell  except  that  the  Germans  rode 
slowly  past  me,  both  vigilantly  keen  in  poise 
and  look,  both  with  weapons  unshipped. 

I  got  an  especially  good  view  of  the  cavalry- 
man. He  was  a  tall,  lean,  blond  young  man, 
with  a  little  yellow  mustache  and  high  cheek- 
bones like  an  Indian's;  and  he  was  sunburned 
until  he  was  almost  as  red  as  an  Indian.  The 
sight  of  that  limping  French  dragoon  the  day 
before  had  made  me  think  of  a  picture  by 
Meissonier  or  Detaille,  but  this  German  put 
me  in  mind  of  one  of  Frederic  Remington's 
paintings.  Change  his  costume  a  bit,  and 
substitute  a  slouch  hat  for  his  flat-topped 
lancer's  cap,  and  he  might  have  cantered  bodily 
out  of  one  of  Remington's  canvases. 

He  rode  past  me — he  and  his  comrade  on 
the  v^h^f^] — and  in  an  instant  they  were  gone 
into  anothei   stieet,  ^^id  the  people  who  h^d 
[4S! 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


scurried  to  cover  at  their  coming  were  out 
again  behind  them,  with  craned  necks  and 
startled  faces. 

Our  group  reassembled  itself  somehow  and 
followed  after  those  two  Germans  who  could 
jog  along  so  serenely  through  a  hostile  town. 
We  did  not  crowd  them — our  health  forbade 
that— but  we  now  desired  above  all  things  to 
get  back  to  our  taxicab,  two  miles  or  more 
away,  before  our  line  of  retreat  should  be  cut 
off.  But  we  had  tarried  too  long  at  our  bread 
and  cheese. 

When  we  came  to  where  the  street  leading 
to  the  Square  of  Saint  Jacques  joined  the 
street  that  led  in  turn  to  the  Brussels  road, 
all  the  people  there  were  crouching  in  their 
doorways  as  quiet  as  so  many  mice,  all  looking 
in  the  direction  in  which  we  hoped  to  go,  all 
pointing  with  their  hands.  No  one  spoke,  but 
the  scuffle  of  wooden-shod  feet  on  the  flags 
made  a  sliding,  slithering  sound,  which  some- 
way carried  a  message  of  warning  more  forcible 
than  any  shouted  word  or  sudden  shriek. 

We  looked  where  their  fingers  aimed,  and, 
as  we  looked,  a  hundred  feet  away  through  a 
cloud  of  dust  a  company  of  German  foot  sol- 
diers swung  across  an  open  grassplot,  where 
a  little  triangular  park  was,  and  straightened 
out  down  the  road  to  Brussels,  singing  snatches 
of  a  German  marching  song  as  they  went. 

And  behind  them  came  trim  officers  on  hand- 
.some,  high-headed  horses,  and  more  infantry; 
[49] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


then  a  bicycle  squad;  then  cavalry,  and  then 
a  light  battery,  bumping  along  over  the  rutted 
stones,  with  white  dust  blowing  back  from 
under  its  wheels  in  scrolls  and  pennons. 

Then  a  troop  of  Uhlans  came,  with  nodding 
lances,  following  close  behind  the  guns;  and  at 
sight  of  them  a  few  men  and  women,  clustered 
at  the  door  of  a  little  w4ne  shop  calling  itself 
the  Belgian  Lion,  began  to  hiss  and  mutter, 
for  among  these  people,  as  we  knew  already, 
the  Uhlans  had  a  hard  name. 

At  that  a  noncommissioned  officer — a  big 
man  with  a  neck  on  him  like  a  bison  and 
a  red,  broad,  menacing  face — turned  in  his 
saddle  and  dropped  the  muzzle  of  his  black 
automatic  on  them.  They  sucked  their  hisses 
back  do"^^l  their  frightened  gullets  so  swiftly 
that  the  exertion  well-nigh  choked  them,  and 
shrank  flat  against  the  wall;  and,  for  all  the 
sound  that  came  from  them  until  he  had  bol- 
stered his  hardware  and  trotted  on,  they  might 
have  been  dead  men  and  women. 

Just  then,  from  perhaps  half  a  mile  on  ahead, 
a  sharp  clatter  of  rifle  fire  sounded — pop!  pop! 
pop! — and  then  a  rattling  volley,  ^'e  saw  the 
Uhlans  snatch  out  their  carbines  and  gallop 
forward  past  the  battery  into  the  dust  curtain. 
And  as  it  swallowed  them  up  we,  who  had 
come  in  a  taxicab  looking  for  the  war,  kneT\' 
that  we  had  found  it;  and  knew,  too,  that  our 
chances  of  ever  seeing  that  taxicab  again  were 
most  exceeding  small. 

[50] 


TO    WAR    IN    A    TAXICAB 


We  had  one  hope — that  this  might  merely 
be  a  reconnoissance  in  force,  and  that  when 
it  turned  back  or  turned  aside  we  might  yet 
slip  through  and  make  for  Brussels  afoot. 
But  it  was  no  reconnoissance — it  was  Germany 
up  and  moving.  We  stayed  in  Louvain 
three  days,  and  for  three  days  we  watched 
the  streaming  past  of  the  biggest  army  we 
had  ever  seen,  and  the  biggest  army  beleaguered 
Belgium  had  ever  seen,  and  one  of  the  biggest, 
most  perfect  armies  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
We  watched  the  gray-clad  columns  pass  until 
the  mind  grew  numb  at  the  prospect  of  com- 
puting their  number.  To  think  of  trying  to 
count  them  was  lilce  trying  to  count  the  leaves 
on  a  tree  or  the  pebbles  on  a  path. 

They  came  and  came,  and  kept  on  coming, 
and  their  iron-shod  feet  flailed  the  earth  to 
powder,  and  there  was  no  end  to  them. 


[51 


CHAPTER  III 
SHERMAN  SAID  IT 


UNDOUBTEDLY  Sherman  said  it.  This 
is  my  text  and  as  illustration  for  my 
text  I  take  the  case  of  the  town  of  La 
Buissiere. 
The  Germans  took  the  toTv^l  of  La  Buissiere 
after  stiff  fighting  on  August  twenty-fourth. 
I  imagine  that  possibly  there  was  a  line  in  the 
dispatches  telling  of  the  fight  there;  but  at 
that  I  doubt  it,  because  on  that  same  date  a 
few  miles  away  a  real  battle  was  raging  be- 
tween the  English  rear  guard,  under  Sir  John 
French,  of  the  retreating  army  of  the  Allies, 
falling  back  into  France,  and  the  Germans. 
Besides,  in  the  sum  total  of  this  war  the  fall 
of  La  Buissiere  hardly  counts.  You  might 
say  it  represents  a  semicolon  in  the  story  of 
the  campaign.  Probably  no  future  historian 
will  give  it  so  much  as  a  paragraph.  In  our 
own  Civil  War  it  would  have  been  worth  a 
page  in  the  records  anyway.  Here  upward  of 
[52] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


three  hundred  men  on  both  sides  were  killed 
and  wounded,  and  as  many  more  Frenchmen 
were  captured;  and  the  town,  when  taken, 
gave  the  winners  the  control  of  the  river 
Sambre  for  many  miles  east  and  west.  Here, 
also,  was  a  German  charge  with  bayonets  up  a 
steep  and  well-defended  height;  and  after  that 
a  hand-to-hand  melee  with  the  French  de- 
fenders on  the  poll  of  the  hill. 

But  this  war  is  so  big  a  thing,  as  wars  go, 
that  an  engagement  of  this  size  is  likely  to  be 
forgotten  in  a  day  or  a  week.  Yet,  I  warrant 
you,  the  people  of  La  Buissiere  will  not  forget 
it.  Nor  shall  Vv^e  forget  it  who  came  that  way 
in  the  early  afternoon  of  a  flawless  summer  day. 

Let  me  try  to  recreate  La  Buissiere  for  you, 
reader.  Here  the  Sambre,  a  small,  orderly 
stream,  no  larger  or  broader  or  wider  than  a 
good-sized  creek  would  be  in  America,  flows 
for  a  mile  or  two  almost  due  east  and  west. 
The  northern  bank  is  almost  flat,  with  low  hills 
rising  on  beyond  like  the  rim  of  a  saucer. 
The  town — most  of  it — is  on  this  side.  On 
the  south  the  land  lifts  in  a  moderately  stiff 
bluff,  perhaps  seventy  feet  high,  with  wooded 
edges,  and  extending  off  and  away  in  a  plateau, 
where  trees  stand  in  well-thinned  groves,  and 
sunken  roads  meander  between  fields  of  hops 
and  grain  and  patches  of  cabbages  and  sugar 
beets.  As  for  the  town,  it  has  perhaps  twenty- 
five  hundred  people — Walloons  and  Flemish  folk 
— living  in  tall,  bleak,  stone  houses  built  flush 
153] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


with  tlie  little  crooked  streets.  Invariably 
these  houses  are  of  a  whitish  gray  color;  almost 
invariably  they  are  narrow  and  cramped- 
looking,  with  very  peaky  gables,  somehow 
suggesting  flat-chested  old  men  standing  in 
close  rows,  with  their  hands  in  their  pockets 
and  their  shoulders  shrugged  up. 

A  canal  bisects  one  corner  of  the  place,  and 
spanning  the  river  there  are — or  were — three 
bridges,  one  for  the  railroad  and  two  for  foot 
and  vehicular  travel.  There  is  a  mill  which 
overhangs  the  river — the  biggest  building  in 
the  town — and  an  ancient  gray  convent,  not 
quite  so  large  as  the  mill;  and,  of  course,  a 
church.  In  most  of  the  houses  there  are  tiny 
shops  on  the  lower  floors,  and  upstairs  are  the 
homes  of  the  people.  On  the  northern  side  of 
the  stream  every  tillable  foot  of  soil  is  under 
cultivation.  There  are  flower  beds,  and  plum 
and  pear  trees  in  the  tiny  grass  plots  alongside 
the  more  pretentious  houses,  and  the  farm  lands 
extend  to  where  the  town  begins. 

This,  briefly,  is  La  Buissiere  as  it  looked 
before  the  war  began — a  little,  drowsy  settle- 
ment of  dull,  frugal,  hard-working,  kindly 
Belgians,  minding  their  own  affairs,  prosper- 
ing in  their  own  small  way,  and  having  no 
quarrel  with  the  outside  world.  They  lived 
in  the  only  corner  of  Europe  that  I  know  of 
where  serving  people  decline  to  accept  tips  for 
rendering  small  services ;  and  in  a  simple,  homely 
fashion  are,  I  think,  the  politest,  the  most 
[54] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


courteous,  the  most  accommodating  human 
beings  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Even  their  misery  did  not  make  them  forget 
their  manners,  as  we  found  when  we  came 
that  way,  close  behind  the  conquerors.  It  was 
only  the  refugees,  fleeing  from  their  homes  or 
going  back  to  them  again,  who  were  too  far 
spent  to  lift  their  caps  in  answer  to  our  hails, 
and  too  miserably  concerned  with  their  own 
ruined  affairs,  or  else  too  afraid  of  inquisitive 
strangers,  to  answer  the  questions  we  some- 
times put  to  them. 

We  were  three  days  getting  from  Brussels  to 
La  Buissiere — a  distance,  I  suppose,  of  about 
forty-five  English  miles.  There  were  no  rail- 
roads and  no  trams  for  us.  The  lines  were  held 
by  the  Germans  or  had  been  destroyed  by  the 
Allies  as  they  fell  back.  Nor  were  there  auto- 
mobiles to  be  had.  Such  automobiles  as  were 
not  hidden  had  been  confiscated  by  one  side 
or  the  other. 

Moreover,  our  journey  was  a  constant  suc- 
cession of  stops  and  starts.  Now  we  would  be 
delayed  for  half  an  hour  while  some  German 
officer  examined  the  passes  we  carried,  he 
meantime  eying  us  with  his  suspicious  squinted 
eyes.  Now  again  we  would  halt  to  listen  to 
some  native's  story  of  battle  or  reprisal  on 
ahead.  And  always  there  was  the  everlasting 
dim  reverberation  of  the  distant  guns  to  draw 
us  forward.  And  always,  too,  there  was  the 
difficulty  of  securing  means  of  transportation. 
[55] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


It  was  on  Sunday  afternoon,  August  twenty- 
third,  when  we  left  Brussels,  intending  to  ride 
to  Waterloo.  There  were  six  of  us,  in  two 
ancient  open  carriages  designed  like  gravy 
boats  and  hauled  by  gaunt  livery  horses. 
Though  the  Germans  had  held  Brussels  for 
four  days  now,  life  in  the  suburbs  went  on 
exactly  as  it  goes  on  in  the  suburbs  of  a  Belgian 
city  in  ordinary  times.  There  was  nothing  to 
suggest  war  or  a  captured  city  in  the  family 
parties  sitting  at  small  tables  before  the  out- 
lying cafes  or  strolling  decorously  under  the 
trees  that  shaded  every  road.  Even  the  Red 
Cross  flags  hanging  from  the  windows  of  many 
of  the  larger  houses  seemed  for  once  in  keeping 
with  the  peaceful  picture.  Of  Germans  during 
the  afternoon  we  saw  almost  none.  Thick 
enough  in  the  center  of  the  town,  the  gray 
backs  showed  themselves  hardly  at  all  in  the 
environs. 

At  the  city  line  a  small  guard  lounged  on 
benches  before  a  wine  shop.  They  stood  up 
as  we  drew  near,  but  changed  their  minds  and 
squatted  down  without  challenging  us  to  pro- 
duce the  safe-conduct  papers  that  Herr  General 
Major  Thaddeus  von  Jarotzky,  sitting  in  due 
state  in  the  ancient  Hotel  de  Ville,  had  be- 
stowed on  us  an  hour  before. 

Just  before  we  reached  Waterloo  we  saw  in  a 

field  on  the  right,  near  the  road,  a  small  camp 

of   German   cavalry.     The   big,   round-topped 

yellow  tents,  sheltering  twenty  men  each  and 

[56] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


looking  like  huge  tortoises,  stood  in  a  line. 
From  the  cook-wagons,  modeled  on  the  design 
of  those  carried  by  an  American  circus,  came 
the  heavy,  meaty  smells  of  stews  boiling  in 
enormous  caldrons.  The  men  were  lying  or 
sitting  on  straw  piles,  singing  German  marching 
songs  as  they  waited  for  their  supper.  It  was 
always  so — whenever  and  wherever  we  found 
German  troops  at  rest  they  were  singing,  eating 
or  drinking — or  doing  all  three  at  once.  A 
German  said  to  me  afterwards: 

*'Why  do  we  win?  Three  things  are  winning 
for  us — good  marching,  good  shooting  and 
good  cooking;  but  most  of  all  the  cooking. 
When  our  troops  stop  there  is  always  plenty 
of  hot  food  for  them.  We  never  have  to  fight 
on  an  empty  stomach — we  Germans." 

These  husky  singers  were  the  last  Germans 
we  were  to  see  for  many  hours;  for  between 
the  garrison  force  left  behind  in  Brussels  and 
the  fast-moving  columns  hurrying  to  meet  the 
English  and  the  French  and  a  few  Belgians — 
on  the  morrow — a  matter  of  many  leagues  now 
intervened. 

Evidence  of  the  passing  through  of  the  troops 
was  plentiful  enough  though.  We  saw  it  in  the 
trampled  hedges;  in  the  empty  beer  bottles 
that  dotted  the  roadside  ditches — empty  bot- 
tles, as  we  had  come  to  know,  meant  Germans 
on  ahead;  in  the  subdued,  furtive  attitude  of 
the  country  folk,  and,  most  of  all,  in  the  chalked 
legend,  in  stubby  German  script — "  Gute  Leutel'* 
[571 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


— on  nearly  every  wine-shop  shutter  or  cottage 
door.  Soldiers  quartered  in  such  a  house  over- 
night had  on  leaving  written  this  line — "Good 
people!" — to  indicate  the  peaceful  character  of 
the  dwellers  therein  and  to  commend  them  to 
the  uncertain  mercy  of  those  who  might  follow. 

The  Lion  of  Waterloo,  standing  on  its  lofty 
green  pyramid,  was  miles  behind  us  before 
realization  came  that  fighting  had  started  that 
day  to  the  southward  of  us.  We  halted  at  a 
taverne  to  water  the  horses,  and  out  came  its 
Flemish  proprietor,  all  gesticulations  and  ex- 
clamations, to  tell  us  that  since  morning  he 
had  heard  firing  on  ahead. 

"Ah,  sirs,"  he  said,  "it  was  inconceivable — 
that  sound  of  the  guns.  It  went  on  for  hours. 
The  whole  world  must  be  at  war  down  the 
road!" 

The  day  before  he  had  seen,  flitting  across 
the  cabbage  patches  and  dodging  among  the 
elm  trees,  a  skirmish  party,  mounted,  which  he 
took  to  be  English;  and  for  two  days,  so  he 
said,  the  Germans  had  been  passing  the  tavern 
in  numbers  uncountable. 

We  hurried  on  then,  but  as  we  met  many 
peasants,  all  coming  the  other  way  afoot  and 
all  with  excited  stories  of  a  supposed  battle 
ahead,  and  as  we  ourselves  now  began  to  catch 
the  faint  reverberations  of  cannon  fire,  our 
drivers  manifested  a  strange  reluctance  about 
proceeding  farther.  And  when,  just  at  dusk, 
we  clattered  into  the  curious  little  convent- 
[58] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


church  town  of  Nivelles,  and  found  the  tiny 
square  before  the  Black  Eagle  Inn  full  of 
refugees  who  had  trudged  in  from  towns  be- 
yond, the  liverymen,  after  taking  off  their  var- 
nished high  hats  to  scratch  their  preplexed 
heads,  announced  that  Brussels  was  where  they 
belonged  and  to  Brussels  they  would  return 
that  night,  though  their  spent  horses  dropped 
in  the  traces  on  the  way. 

We  supped  that  night  at  the  Black  Eagle — 
slept  there  too — and  it  was  at  supper  we  had  as 
guests  Raymond  Putzeys,  aged  twelve,  and 
Alfred,  his  father.  Except  crumbs  of  chocolate 
and  pieces  of  dry  bread,  neither  of  them  had 
eaten  for  two  days. 

The  boy,  who  was  a  round-faced,  handsome, 
dirty,  polite  little  chap,  said  not  a  word  except 
''Merci!"  He  was  too  busy  clearing  his  plate 
clean  as  fast  as  we  loaded  it  with  ham  and 
eggs  and  plum  jam;  and  when  he  had  eaten 
enough  for  three  and  could  hold  no  more  he 
went  to  sleep,  with  his  tousled  head  among 
the  dishes. 

The  father  between  bites  told  us  his  tale — 
such  a  tale  as  we  had  heard  dozens  of  times 
already  and  were  to  hear  again  a  hundred 
times  before  that  crowded  week  ended — he 
telling  it  with  rolling  eyes  and  lifting  brows, 
and  graphic  and  abundant  gestures.  Behind 
him  and  us,  penning  our  table  about  with  a 
living  hedge,  stood  the  leading  burghers  of 
Nivelles,  now  listening  to  him,  now  watching 
[59] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


US  with  curious  eyes.  And,  as  he  talked  on, 
the  landlord  dimmed  the  oil  lamps  and  made 
fast  the  door;  for  this  town,  being  in  German 
hands,  was  under  martial  law  and  must  lock 
and  bar  itself  in  at  eight  o'clock  each  night. 
So  we  sat  in  a  half  light  and  listened. 

They  lived,  the  two  Putzeys,  at  a  hamlet 
named  Marchienne-au-Pont,  to  the  southward. 
The  Germans  had  come  into  it  the  day  before 
at  sunup,  and  finding  the  French  there  had 
opened  fire.  From  the  houses  the  French  had 
replied  until  driven  out  by  heavy  odds,  and  then 
they  ran  across  the  fields,  leaving  many  dead 
and  wounded  behind  them.  As  for  the  in- 
habitants they  had,  during  the  fighting,  hidden 
in  their  cellars. 

"When  the  French  were  gone  the  Germans 
drove  us  out,"  went  on  the  narrator;  "and,  of 
the  men,  they  made  several  of  us  march  ahead 
of  them  down  the  road  into  the  next  village, 
we  holding  up  our  hands  and  loudly  begging 
those  within  the  houses  not  to  fire,  for  fear  of 
killing  us  who  were  their  friends  and  neighbors. 
When  this  town  surrendered  the  Germans  let 
us  go,  but  first  one  of  them  gave  me  a  cake  of 
chocolate. 

"Yet  when  I  tried  to  go  to  aid  a  wounded 
Frenchman  who  lay  in  the  fields,  another  Ger- 
man soldier  fired  at  me.  I  heard  the  bullet 
— it  buzzed  like  a  hornet.  So  then  I  ran  away 
and  found  my  son  here;  and  we  came  across 
the  country,  following  the  canals  and  avoiding 
[60] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


the  roads,  which  were  filled  with  German 
troops.  When  we  had  gone  a  mile  we  looked 
back  and  there  was  much  thick  smoke  behind  us 
— our  houses  were  burning,  I  suppose.  So  last 
night  we  slept  in  the  woods  and  all  day  we 
walked,  and  to-night  reached  here,  bringing 
with  us  nothing  except  the  clothes  on  our  backs. 

"I  have  no  wife — she  has  been  dead  for  two 
years — but  in  Brussels  I  have  two  daughters  at 
school.  Do  you  think  I  shall  be  permitted  to 
enter  Brussels  and  seek  for  my  two  daughters? 
This  morning  they  told  me  Brussels  was  burn- 
ing; but  that  I  do  not  believe." 

Then,  also,  he  told  us  in  quick,  eager  sen- 
tences, lowering  his  voice  while  he  spoke,  that 
a  priest,  with  his  hands  tied  behind  his  back, 
had  been  driven  through  a  certain  village  ahead 
of  the  Germans,  as  a  human  shield  for  them; 
and  that,  in  still  another  village,  two  aged 
women  had  been  violated  and  murdered.  Had 
he  beheld  these  things  with  his  own  eyes? 
No;  he  had  been  told  of  them. 

Here  I  might  add  that  this  was  our  com- 
monest experience  in  questioning  the  refugees. 
Every  one  of  them  had  a  tale  to  tell  of  German 
atrocities  on  noncombatants ;  but  not  often  did 
we  find  an  avowed  eye-witness  to  such  things. 
Always  our  informant  had  heard  of  the  tor- 
turing or  the  maiming  or  the  murdering,  but 
rarely  had  he  personally  seen  it.  It  had  usually 
happened  in  another  town — not  in  his  own 
town. 

[61] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


We  hoped  to  hire  fresh  vehicles  of  some  sort 
in  Nivelles.  Indeed,  a  half-drunken  burgher 
who  spoke  fair  English,  and  who,  because  he 
had  ohce  lived  in  America,  insisted  on  taking 
personal  charge  of  our  affairs,  was  constantly 
bustling  in  to  say  he  had  arranged  for  carriages 
and  horses;  but  when  the  starting  hour  came — 
at  five  o'clock  on  Monday  morning — there  was 
no  sign  either  of  our  fuddled  guardian  or  of 
the  rigs  he  had  promised.  So  we  set  out 
afoot,  following  the  everlasting  sound  of  the 
guns. 

After  having  many  small  adventures  on  the 
way  we  came  at  nightfall  to  Binche,  a  town 
given  over  to  dullness  and  lacemaking,  and 
once  a  year  to  a  masked  carnival,  but  which 
now  was  jammed  with  German  supply  trains, 
and  by  token  of  this  latter  circumstance  filled 
with  apprehensive  townspeople.  But  there  had 
been  no  show  of  resistance  here,  and  no  houses 
had  been  burned;  and  the  Germans  were  paying 
script  for  what  they  took  and  treating  the 
townspeople  civilly. 

Indeed,  all  that  day  we  had  traveled  through 
a  district  as  yet  unharried  and  unmolested. 
Though  sundry  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Ger- 
mans had  gone  that  way,  no  burnt  houses  or 
squandered  fields  marked  their  wake;  and  the 
few  peasants  who  had  not  run  away  at  the 
approach  of  the  dreaded  Allemands  were  back 
at  work,  trying  to  gather  their  crops  in  barrows 
or  on  their  backs,  since  they  had  no  work-cattle 
[62] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


left.  For  these  the  Germans  had  taken  from 
them,  to  the  last  fit  horse  and  the  last  colt. 

At  Binche  we  laid  up  two  nights  and  a  day 
for  the  curing  of  our  blistered  feet.  Also,  here 
we  bought  our  two  flimsy  bicycles  and  our 
decrepit  dogcart,  and  our  still  more  decrepit 
mare  to  haul  it;  and,  with  this  equipment,  on 
Wednesday  morning,  bright  and  early,  we  made 
a  fresh  start,  heading  now  toward  Maubeuge, 
across  the  French  boundary. 

Current  rumor  among  the  soldiers  at  Binche 
— for  the  natives,  seemingly  through  fear  for 
their  own  skins,  would  tell  us  nothing — was 
that  at  Maubeuge  the  onward-pressing  Ger- 
mans had  caught  up  with  the  withdrawing  col- 
umns of  the  Allies  and  were  trying  to  bottle 
the  stubborn  English  rear  guard.  For  once  the 
gossip  of  the  privates  and  the  noncommissioned 
officers  proved  to  be  true.  There  was  fighting 
that  day  near  Maubeuge — hard  fighting  and 
plenty  of  it;  but,  though  we  got  within  five 
miles  of  it,  and  heard  the  guns  and  saw  the 
smoke  from  them,  we  were  destined  not  to  get 
there. 

Strung  out,  with  the  bicycles  in  front,  we 
went  down  the  straight  white  road  that  ran 
toward  the  frontier.  After  an  hour  or  two  of 
steady  going  we  began  to  notice  signs  of  the 
retreat  that  had  trailed  through  this  section 
forty-eight  hours  before.  We  picked  up  a 
torn  shoulder  strap,  evidently  of  French  work- 
manship, which  had  13  embroidered  on  it  in 
[63] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


faded  red  tape ;  and  we  found,  behind  the  trunk 
of  a  tree,  a  knapsack,  new  but  empty,  which 
was  too  light  to  have  been  part  of  a  German 
soldier's  equipment. 

We  thought  it  was  French;  but  now  I  think 
it  must  have  been  Belgian,  because,  as  we  sub- 
sequently discovered,  a  few  scattering  detach- 
ments of  the  Belgian  foot  soldiers  who  fled 
from  Brussels  on  the  eve  of  the  occupation — 
disappearing  so  completely  and  so  magically — 
made  their  way  westward  and  southward  to 
the  French  lines,  toward  Mons,  and  enrolled 
with  the  Allies  in  the  last  desperate  effort  to 
dam  off  and  stem  back  the  German  torrent. 

Also,  in  a  hedge,  was  a  pair  of  new  shoes, 
with  their  mouths  gaping  open  and  their 
latchets  hanging  down  like  tongues,  as  though 
hungering  for  feet  to  go  into  them.  But  not  a 
shred  or  scrap  of  German  belongings — barring 
only  the  empty  bottles — did  we  see. 

The  marvelous  German  system,  which  is 
made  up  of  a  million  small  things  to  form  one 
great,  complete  thing,  ordained  that  never, 
either  when  marching  or  after  camping,  or  even 
after  fighting,  should  any  object,  however 
worthless,  be  discarded,  lest  it  give  to  hostile 
eyes  some  hint  as  to  the  name  of  the  command 
or  the  extent  of  its  size.  These  Germans  we 
were  trailing  cleaned  up  behind  themselves  as 
carefully  as  New  England  housewives. 
I  It  may  have  been  the  German  love  of  order, 
persisting  even  here,  that  induced  them  to  avoid 
[641 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


trampling  the  ripe  grain  in  the  fields  wherever 
possible.  Certainly,  except  when  dealing  out 
punishment,  they  did  remarkably  little  dam- 
age, considering  their  numbers,  along  their  line 
of  march  through  this  lowermost  strip  of  Bel- 
gium. 

At  Merbes-Ste.-Marie,  a  matter  of  six  kilo- 
meters from  Binche,  we  came  on  the  first  proof 
of  actual  wantonness  we  encountered  that 
day.  An  old  v/oman  sat  in  a  doorway  of  what 
had  been  a  wayside  wine  shop,  guarding  the 
pitiable  ruin  of  her  stock  and  fixtures.  All  about 
her  on  the  floor  was  a  litter  of  foul  straw,  mud- 
died by  many  feet  and  stained  with  spilled 
drink.  The  stench  from  a  bloated  dead  cavalry 
horse  across  the  road  poisoned  the  air.  The 
v/oman  said  a  party  of  private  soldiers,  straying 
back  from  the  main  column,  had  despoiled  her, 
taking  what  they  pleased  of  her  goods  and  in 
pure  vandalism  destroying  what  they  could  not 
use. 

Her  shop  was  ruined,  she  said.  With  a  ges- 
ture of  both  arms,  as  though  casting  something 
from  her,  she  expressed  how  utter  and  complete 
was  her  ruin.  Also  she  was  hungry — she  and 
her  children — for  the  Germans  had  eaten  all 
the  food  in  the  house  and  all  the  food  in  the 
houses  of  her  neighbors.  We  could  not  feed  her, 
for  we  had  no  stock  of  provisions  with  us;  but 
we  gave  her  a  five-franc  piece  and  left  her 
calling  down  the  blessings  of  the  saints  on  us 
in  French-Flemish. 

[65] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


The  sister  village  of  Merbes-le-Chateau,  an- 
other kilometer  farther  on,  revealed  to  us  all  its 
doors  and  many  of  its  windows  caved  in  by 
blows  of  gun  butts  and,  at  the  nearer  end  of  the 
principal  street,  five  houses  in  smoking  ruins. 
A  group  of  men  and  women  were  pawing  about 
in  the  wreckage,  seeking  salvage.  They  had 
saved  a  half -charred  washstand,  a  scorched 
mattress,  a  clock  and  a  few  articles  of  women's 
wear;  and  these  they  had  piled  in  a  mound  on 
the  edge  of  the  road. 

At  first,  not  knowing  who  we  were,  they  stood 
mute,  replying  to  questions  only  with  shrugged 
shoulders  and  lifted  eyebrows;  but  when  we 
made  them  realize  that  we  were  Americans  they 
changed.  All  were  ready  enough  to  talk  then; 
they  crowded  about  us,  gesticulating  and  inter- 
rupting one  another.  From  the  babble  we 
gathered  that  the  German  skirmishers,  coming 
in  the  strength  of  one  company,  had  found  an 
English  cavalry  squad  in  the  town.  The  Eng- 
lish had  swapped  a  few  volleys  with  them,  then 
had  fallen  back  toward  the  river  in  good  order 
and  without  loss. 

The  Germans,  pushing  in,  had  burned  certain 
outlying  houses  from  which  shots  had  come 
and  burst  open  the  rest.  Also  they  had  re- 
peated the  trick  of  capturing  sundry  luckless 
natives  and,  in  their  rush  through  the  town, 
driving  these  prisoners  ahead  of  them  as  living 
bucklers  to  minimize  the  danger  of  being  shot 
at  from  the  windows. 

[66] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


One  youth  showed  us  a  raw  wound  in  his 
ear.  A  piece  of  tile,  spHntered  by  an  errant 
bullet,  had  pierced  it,  he  said,  as  the  Germans 
drove  him  before  them.  Another  man  told  us 
his  father — and  the  father  must  have  been  an 
old  man,  for  the  speaker  himself  was  in  his 
fifties — had  been  shot  through  the  thigh.  But 
had  anybody  been  killed?  That  was  what  we 
wanted  to  know.  Ah,  but  yes!  A  dozen  eager 
fingers  pointed  to  the  house  immediately  behind 
us.    There  a  man  had  been  killed. 

Coming  back  to  try  to  save  some  of  their 
belongings  after  the  Germans  had  gone  through, 
these  others  had  found  him  at  the  head  of  the 
cellar  steps  in  his  blazing  house.  His  throat 
had  been  cut  and  his  blood  was  on  the  floor, 
and  he  was  dead.  They  led  us  into  the  shell 
of  the  place,  the  stone  walls  being  still  stanchly 
erect;  but  the  roof  was  gone,  and  in  the  cinders 
and  dust  on  the  planks  of  an  inner  room  they 
showed  us  a  big  dull-brown  smear. 

This,  they  told  us,  pointing,  was  the  place 
where  he  lay.  One  man  in  pantomime  acted 
out  the  drama  of  the  discovery  of  the  body. 
He  was  a  born  actor,  that  Belgian  villager,  and 
an  orator — with  his  hands.  Somehow,  watching 
him,  I  visualized  the  victim  as  a  little  man,  old 
and  stoop-shouldered  and  feeble  in  his  move- 
ments. 

I  looked  about  the  room.  The  corner  toward 
the  road  was  a  black  ruin,  but  the  back  wall 
was  hardly  touched  by  the  marks  of  the  fire. 
[67] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


On  a  mantel  small  bits  of  pottery  stood  intact, 
and  a  holy  picture  on  the  wall — a  cheap  print 
of  a  saint — was  not  even  singed.  At  the  foot 
of  the  cellar  steps  curdled  milk  stood  in  pans; 
and  beside  the  milk,  on  a  table,  was  a  half- 
moon  of  cheese  and  a  long  krife. 

We  wanted  to  know  why  the  man  who  lived 
here  had  been  killed.  They  professed  igno- 
rance then — none  of  them  knew,  or,  at  least, 
none  of  them  would  say.  A  little  later  a  woman 
told  us  she  had  heard  the  Germans  caught  him 
watching  from  a  window  with  a  pair  of  opera 
glasses,  and  on  this  evidence  took  him  for  a 
spy.  But  we  could  secure  no  direct  evidence 
either  to  confirm  the  tale  or  to  disprove  it. 

We  got  to  the  center  of  the  town,  leaving 
the  venerable  nag  behind  to  be  baited  at  a  big 
gray  barn  by  a  big,  shapeless,  kindly  woman 
hostler  whose  wooden  shoes  clattered  on  the 
round  cobbles  of  her  stable  yard  like  drum  taps. 

In  the  Square,  after  many  citizens  had  in- 
formed us  there  was  nothing  to  eat,  a  little 
Frenchwoman  took  pity  on  our  emptiness,  and, 
leading  us  to  a  parlor  behind  a  shop  where  she 
sold,  among  other  things,  post  cards,  cheeses 
and  underwear,  she  made  us  a  huge  omelet 
and  gave  us  also  good  butter  and  fresh  milk 
and  a  pot  of  her  homemade  marmalade.  Her 
two  little  daughters,  who  looked  as  though 
they  had  escaped  from  a  Frans  Hals  canvas, 
waited  on  us  while  we  wolfed  the  food  down. 

Quite  casually  our  hostess  showed  us  a  round 
[68] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


hole  in  the  window  behind  us,  a  big  white  scar 
in  the  wooden  inner  shutter  and  a  flattened 
chunk  of  lead.  The  night  before,  it  seemed, 
some  one,  for  purposes  unknown,  had  fired  a 
bullet  through  the  window  of  her  house.  It 
was  proof  of  the  rapidity  with  which  the  actual 
presence  of  war  works  indifference  to  sudden 
shocks  among  a  people  that  this  woman  could 
discuss  the  incident  quietly.  Hostile  gun  butts 
had  splintered  her  front  door;  why  not  a  stray 
bullet  or  two  through  her  back  window?  So 
we  interpreted  her  attitude. 

It  was  she  who  advised  us  not  to  try  to  ford 
the  Sambre  at  Merbes-le-Chateau,  but  to  go 
off  at  an  angle  to  La  Buissiere,  where  she  had 
heard  one  bridge  still  stood.  She  said  nothing 
of  a  fight  at  that  place.  It  is  possible  that  she 
knew  nothing  of  it,  though  the  two  towns  almost 
touched.  Indeed,  in  all  these  Belgian  towns 
we  found  the  people  so  concerned  with  their 
own  small  upheavals  and  terrors  that  they 
seemed  not  to  care  or  even  to  know  how  their 
neighbors  a  mile  or  two  miles  away  had  fared. 

Following  this  advice  we  swung  about  and 
drove  to  La  Buissiere  to  find  the  bridge  that 
might  still  be  intact;  and,  finding  it,  we  found 
also,  and  quite  by  chance,  the  scene  of  the  first 
extended  engagement  on  which  we  stumbled. 

Our  first  intimation  of  it  was  the  presence, 

in  a  cabbage  field  beyond  the  town,  of  three 

strangely  subdued  peasants  softening  the  hard 

earth  with  water,  so  that  they  might  dig  a 

[69] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


grave  for  a  dead  horse,  which,  after  lying  two 
days  in  the  hot  sun,  had  aheady  become  a 
nuisance  and  might  become  a  pestilence.  When 
we  told  them  we  meant  to  enter  La  Buissiere 
they  held  up  their  soiled  hands  in  protest. 

"There  has  been  much  fighting  there,"  one 
said,  "and  many  are  dead,  and  more  are  dying. 
Also,  the  shooting  still  goes  on;  but  what  it 
means  we  do  not  know,  because  we  dare  not 
venture  into  the  streets,  which  are  full  of  Ger- 
mans.    Hark,  m'sieurs!" 

Even  as  he  spoke  we  heard  a  rifle  crack;  and 
then,  after  a  pause,  a  second  report.  We  went 
forward  cautiously  across  a  bridge  that  spanned 
an  arm  of  the  canal,  and  past  a  double  line  of 
houses,  with  broken  windows,  from  which  no 
sign  or  sound  of  life  came.  Suddenly  at  a  turn 
three  German  privates  of  a  lancer  regiment 
faced  us.  They  were  burdened  with  bottles  of 
beer,  and  one  carried  his  lance,  which  he  flung 
playfully  in  our  path.  He  had  been  drinking 
and  was  jovially  exhilarated.  As  soon  as  he 
saw  the  small  silk  American  flag  that  fluttered 
from  the  rail  of  our  dogcart  he  and  his  friends 
became  enthusiastic  in  their  greetings,  offering 
us  beer  and  wanting  to  know  whether  the 
Americans  meant  to  declare  for  Germany  now 
that  the  Japanese  had  sided  with  England. 

Leaving  them  cheering  for  the  Americans  we 
negotiated  another  elbow  in  the  twisting  street 
— and  there  all  about  us  was  the  aftermath 
and  wreckage  of  a  spirited  fight. 
[70] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


Earlier  in  this  chapter  I  told — or  tried  to 
tell — how  La  Buissiere  must  have  looked  in 
peaceful  times.  I  shall  try  nov/  to  tell  how  it 
actually  looked  that  afternoon  we  rode  into  it. 

In  the  center  of  the  town  the  main  street 
opens  out  to  form  an  irregular  circle,  and  the 
houses  fronting  it  make  a  compact  ring. 
Through  a  gap  one  gets  a  glimpse  of  the  little 
river  which  one  has  just  crossed;  and  on  the 
river  bank  stands  the  mill,  or  what  is  left  of 
it,  and  that  is  little  enough.  Its  roof  is  gone, 
shot  clear  away  in  a  shower  of  shattered 
tiling,  and  its  walls  are  breached  in  a  hundred 
places.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  mill  will  never 
grind  grist  again. 

On  its  upper  floor,  which  is  now  a  sieve,  the 
Germans — so  they  themselves  told  us — found, 
after  the  fighting,  the  seventy-year-old  miller, 
dead,  with  a  gun  in  his  hands  and  a  hole  in  his 
head.  He  had  elected  to  help  the  French  de- 
fend the  place;  and  it  was  as  well  for  him  that 
he  fell  fighting,  because,  had  he  been  taken 
alive,  the  Prussians,  following  their  grim  rule 
for  all  civilians  caught  with  weapons,  would 
have  stood  him  up  against  a  wall  with  a  firing 
squad  before  him. 

The  houses  round  about  have  fared  better, 
in  the  main,  than  the  mill,  though  none  of 
them  has  come  scatheless  out  of  the  fight. 
Hardly  a  windowpane  is  whole;  hardly  a  wall 
but  is  pocked  by  bullets  or  rent  by  larger  mis- 
siles. Some  houses  have  lost  roofs;  some  have 
[71] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


lost  side  walls,  so  that  one  can  gaze  straight 
into  them  and  see  the  cluttered  furnishings, 
half  buried  in  shattered  masonry  and  crumbled 
plaster. 

One  small  cottage  has  been  blown  clear  away 
in  a  blast  of  artillery  fire;  only  the  chimney 
remains,  pointing  upward  like  a  stubby  finger. 
A  fireplace,  with  a  fire  in  it,  is  the  glowing  heart 
of  a  house;  and  a  chimney  completes  it  and 
reveals  that  it  is  a  home  fit  for  human  creatures 
to  live  in;  but  we  see  here — and  the  truth  of  it 
strikes  us  as  it  never  did  before — that  a  chimney 
standing  alone  typifies  desolation  and  ruin 
more  fitly,  more  brutally,  than  any  written 
words  could  typify  it. 

Everywhere  there  are  soldiers — German  sol- 
diers— in  their  soiled,  dusty  gray  service  uni- 
forms, always  in  heavy  boots;  always  with 
their  tunics  buttoned  to  the  throat.  Some,  off 
duty,  are  lounging  at  ease  in  the  doors  of  the 
houses.  More,  on  duty,  are  moving  about 
briskly  m  squads,  with  fixed  bayonets.  One  is 
learning  to  ride  a  bicycle,  and  when  he  falls 
off,  as  he  does  repeatedly,  his  comrades  laugh 
at  him  and  shout  derisive  advice  at  him. 

There  are  not  many  of  the  townsfolk  in  sight. 
Experience  has  taught  us  that  in  any  town 
not  occupied  by  the  enemy  our  appearance 
will  be  the  signal  for  an  immediate  gathering 
of  the  citizens,  all  flocking  about  us,  filled 
with  a  naive,  respectful  inquisitiveness,  and 
wanting  to  know  where  we  have  come  from  and 
[72] 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


to  what  place  we  are  going.  Here  in  this 
stricken  town  not  a  single  villager  comes  near 
us.  A  priest  passes  us,  bows  deeply  to  us,  and 
in  an  instant  is  gone  round  a  jog  in  the  street, 
the  skirts  of  his  black  robe  flicking  behind  him. 
From  upper  windows  faces  peer  out  at  us — 
faces  of  women  and  children  mostly.  In  nearly 
every  one  of  these  faces  a  sort  of  cow-like  bewil- 
derment expresses  itself — not  grief,  not  even 
resentment,  but  merely  a  stupefied  wonderment 
at  the  astounding  fact  that  their  town,  rather 
than  some  other  town,  should  be  the?  town 
where  the  soldiers  of  other  nations  come  to 
fight  out  their  feud.  We  have  come  to  know 
well  that  look  these  last  few  days.  So  far  as 
we  have  seen  there  has  been  no  mistreatment 
of  civilians  by  the  soldiers;  yet  we  note  that 
the  villagers  stay  inside  the  shelter  of  their 
damaged  homes  as  though  they  felt  safer  there. 

A  young  ofiicer  bustles  up,  spick  and  span 
in  his  tan  boots  and  tan  gloves,  and,  finding 
us  to  be  Americans  and  correspondents,  be- 
comes instantly  effusive.  He  has  just  come 
through  his  first  fight,  seemingly  with  some 
credit  to  himself;  and  he  is  proud  of  the  part 
he  has  played  and  is  pleased  to  talk  about  it. 
Of  his  own  accord  he  volunteers  to  lead  us  to 
the  heights  back  of  the  town  where  the  French 
defenses  were  and  where  the  hand-to-hand 
fighting  took  place. 

As  we  trail  along  behind  him  in  single  file 
we  pass  a  small  paved  court  before  a  stable 
[731 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


and  see  a  squad  of  French  prisoners.  Later 
we  are  to  see  several  thousand  French  prisoners ; 
but  now  the  sight  is  at  once  a  sensation  and  a 
novelty  to  us.  These  are  all  French  prisoners; 
there  are  no  Belgians  or  Englishmen  among 
them.  In  their  long,  cumbersome  blue  coats 
and  baggy  red  pants  they  are  huddled  down 
against  a  wall  in  a  heap  of  straw.  They  lie 
there  silently,  chewing  straws  and  looking  very 
forlorn.  Four  German  soldiers  with  fixed 
bayonets  are  guarding  them. 

The  young  lieutenant  leads  us  along  a  steeply 
ascending  road  over  a  ridge  and  then  stops; 
and  as  we  look  about  us  the  consciousness 
strikes  home  to  us,  with  almost  the  jar  of  a 
physical  blow,  that  we  are  standing  where  men 
have  lately  striven  together  and  have  fallen 
and  died. 

In  front  of  us  and  below  us  is  the  town,  with 
the  river  winding  into  it  at  the  east  and  out 
of  it  at  the  west;  and  beyond  the  town,  to  the 
north,  is  the  cup-shaped  valley  of  fair,  fat 
farm  lands,  all  heavy  and  pregnant  with  un- 
garnered,  ungathered  crops.  Behind  us,  on 
the  front  of  the  hill,  is  a  hedge,  and  beyond  the 
hedge — just  a  foot  or  so  back  of  it,  in  fact — 
is  a  deep  trench,  plainly  dug  out  by  hand,  and 
so  lately  done  that  the  cut  clods  are  still  moist 
and  fresh-looking.  At  the  first  instant  of  look- 
ing it  seems  to  us  that  this  intrenchment  is 
full  of  dead  men;  but  when  we  look  closer  we 
see  that  what  we  take  for  corpses  are  the  scat- 
[741 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


tered  garments  and  equipments  of  French  in- 
fantrymen— long  blue  coats ;  peaked,  red-topped 
caps;  spare  shirts;  rifled  knapsacks;  water- 
bottles;  broken  guns;  side  arms;  bayonet  belts 
and  blanket  rolls.  There  are  perhaps  twenty 
guns  in  sight.  Each  one  has  been  rendered 
useless  by  being  struck  against  the  earth  with 
sufficient  force  to  snap  the  stock  at  the  grip. 

Almost  at  my  feet  is  a  knapsack,  ripped  open 
and  revealing  a  card  of  small  china  buttons,  a 
new  red  handkerchief,  a  gray-striped  flannel 
shirt,  a  pencil  and  a  sheaf  of  writing  paper. 
Rummaging  in  the  main  compartment  I  find, 
folded  at  the  back,  a  book  recording  the  name 
and  record  of  military  service  of  one  Gaston 
Michel  Miseroux,  whose  home  is  at  Amiens, 
and  who  is — or  was — a  private  in  the  Tenth 

Battalion  of  the Regiment  of  Chasseurs  a 

Pied.  Whether  this  Gaston  Michel  Miseroux 
got  away  alive  without  his  knapsack,  or  whether 
he  was  captured  or  was  killed,  there  is  none 
to  say.  His  service  record  is  here  in  the 
trampled  dust  and  he  is  gone. 

Before  going  farther  the  young  lieutenant, 
speaking  in  his  broken  English,  told  us  the 
story  of  the  fight,  which  had  been  fought,  he 
said,  just  forty-eight  hours  before.  "The 
French,"  he  said,  "must  have  been  here  for 
several  days.  They  had  fortified  this  hill,  as 
you  see;  digging  intrenchments  in  front  for 
their  riflemen  and  putting  their  artillery  behind 
at  a  place  I  shall  presently  show  you.  Also 
[75] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


they  had  placed  many  of  their  sharpshooters 
m  the  houses.  It  was  a  strong  position,  com- 
manding the  passage  of  the  river,  and  they 
should  have  been  able  to  hold  it  against  our 
forces. 

"Our  men  came,  as  you  did,  along  that  road 
off  yonder;  and  then  our  infantry  advanced 
across  the  fields  under  cover  of  our  artillery 
fire.  We  were  in  the  open  and  the  French 
were  above  us  here  and  behind  shelter;  and  so 
we  lost  many  men. 

"They  had  mined  the  bridge  over  the  canal 
and  also  the  last  remaining  bridge  across  the 
river;  but  we  came  so  fast  that  we  took  both 
bridges  before  they  could  set  oft  the  mines. 

"In  twenty  minutes  we  held  the  town  and 
the  last  of  their  sharpshooters  in  the  houses  had 
been  dislodged  or  killed.  Then,  while  our  guns 
moved  over  there  to  the  left  and  shelled  them 
on  the  flank,  two  companies  of  Germans — 
five  hundred  men— charged  up  the  steep  road 
over  which  you  have  just  climbed  and  took 
this  trench  here  in  five  minutes  of  close  fighting. 

"The  enemy  lost  many  men  here  before  they 
ran.  So  did  we  lose  many.  On  that  spot 
there" — he  pointed  to  a  little  gap  in  the  hedge, 
not  twenty  feet  away,  where  the  grass  was 
pressed  flat — "I  saw  three  dead  men  lying  in  a 
heap. 

"We  pushed  the  French  back,  taking  a  few 
prisoners  as  we  went,  until  on  the  other  side 
of  this  hill  our  artillery  began  to  rake  them, 
[761 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


and  then  they  gave  way  altogether  and  re- 
treated to  the  south,  taking  their  guns.  Re- 
member, they  outnumbered  us  and  they  had 
the  advantage  of  position;  but  we  whipped 
them — we  Germans — as  we  always  do  whip  our 
enemies. 

His  voice  changed  from  boasting  to  pity: 
**  Ach,  but  it  was  shameful  that  they  should 
have  been  sent  against  us  wearing  those  long 
blue  coats,  those  red  trousers,  those  shiny  black 
belts  and  bright  brass  buttons!  At  a  mile, 
or  even  half  a  mile,  the  Germans  in  their  dark- 
gray  uniforms,  with  dull  facings,  fade  into  the 
background;  but  a  Frenchman  in  his  foolish 
monkey  clothes  is  a  target  for  as  far  as  you 
can  see  him. 

*  "And  their  equipment — see  how  light  it  is 
when  compared  with  ours!  And  their  guns — 
so  inferior,  so  old-fashioned  alongside  the  Ger- 
man guns!  I  tell  you  this:  Forty-four  years 
they  have  been  wishing  to  fight  us  for  what  we 
did  in  1870;  and  when  the  time  comes  they  are 
not  ready  and  we  are  ready.  But  we  Germans 
are  always  ready.  We  knew  enemies  sur- 
rounded us.  And  so,  years  ago,  we  prepared 
I  for  this  great  day." 

Next  he  escorted  us  back  along  the  small 
plateau  that  extended  south  from  the  face  of 
the  bluff.  We  made  our  way  through  a  con- 
stantly growing  confusion  of  abandoned  equip- 
ment and  garments — all  the  jflotsam  and  jetsam 
of  a  rout.  I  suppose  we  saw  as  many  as  fifty 
[77] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


smashed  French  rifles,  as  many  as  a  hundred 
and  fifty  canteens  and  knapsacks. 

Crossing  a  sunken  road,  where  trenches  for 
riflemen  to  kneel  in  and  fire  from  had  been  dug 
in  the  sides  of  the  bank — a  road  our  guide 
said  was  full  of  dead  men  after  the  fight — we 
came  very  soon  to  the  site  of  the  French  camp. 
Here,  from  the  medley  and  mixture  of  an  in- 
describable jumble  of  wreckage,  certain  ob- 
jects stand  out,  as  I  write  this,  detached  and 
plain  in  my  mind;  such  things,  for  example,  as 
a  straw  basket  of  twelve  champagne  bottles 
w^ith  two  bottles  full  and  ten  empty;  a  box  of 
lump  sugar,  broken  open,  with  a  stain  of  spilled 
red  wine  on  some  of  the  white  cubes;  a  roll  of 
new  mattresses  jammed  into  a  natural  recep- 
tacle at  the  root  of  an  oak  tree;  a  saber  hilt  of 
shining  brass  with  the  blade  missing;  a  wliole 
set  of  pewter  knives  and  forks  sown  broadcast 
on  the  bruised  and  trampled  grass.  But  there 
was  no  German  relic  in  the  lot — you  may  be 
sure  of  that.  Farther  down,  where  the  sunken 
road  again  wound  across  our  path,  we  passed 
an  old-fashioned  family  carriage  jammed  against 
the  bank,  with  one  shaft  snapped  off  short. 
Lying  on  the  dusty  seat-cushion  was  a  single 
silver  teaspoon. 

Almost  opposite  the  carriage,  against  the 
other  bank,  was  a  cavalryman's  boot;  it  had 
been  cut  from  a  wounded  limb.  The  leather 
had  been  split  all  the  way  down  the  leg  from 
the  top  to  the  ankle,  and  the  inside  of  the  boot 
[781 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


was  full  of  clotted,  dried  blood.  And  just  as 
we  turned  back  to  return  to  the  town  I  saw  a 
child's  stuffed  cloth  doll — rag  dolls  I  think 
they  call  them  in  the  States — lying  flat  in  the 
road;  and  a  wagon  wheel  or  a  camion  wheel  had 
passed  over  the  head,  squashing  it  flat. 

I  am  not  striving  for  effect  when  I  tell  of 
this  trifle.  When  you  write  of  such  things  as 
a  battlefield  you  do  not  need  to  strive  for 
effect.  The  effects  are  all  there,  ready-made, 
waiting  to  be  set  down.  Nor  do  I  know  how 
a  child's  doll  came  to  be  in  that  harried,  up- 
torn  place.  I  only  know  it  was  there,  and  being 
there  it  seemed  to  me  to  sum  up  the  fate  of 
little  Belgium  in  this  great  war.  If  I  had  been 
seeking  a  visible  symbol  of  Belgium's  case  I 
do  not  believe  I  could  have  found  a  more  fit- 
ting one  anywhere. 

Going  down  the  hill  to  the  town  we  met, 
skirting  across  our  path,  a  party  of  natives 
wearing  Red  Cross  distinguishments.  The 
lieutenant  said  these  men  had  undoubtedly 
been  beating  the  woods  and  grain  fields  for 
the  scattered  wounded  or  dead.  He  added, 
without  emotion,  that  from  time  to  time  they 
found  one  such;  in  fact,  the  volunteer  searchers 
had  brought  in  two  Frenchmen  just  before  we 
arrived — one  to  be  cared  for  at  the  hospital, 
the  other  to  be  buried. 

We  had  thanked  the  young  lieutenant  and 
had  bade  him  good-by,  and  were  starting  off 
again,  hoping  to  make  Maubeuge  before  night, 
1791 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


when  suddenly  it  struck  me  that  the  one 
thing  about  La  Buissiere  I  should  recall 
most  vividly  was  not  the  sight  of  it,  all  stricken 
and  stunned  and  forlorn  as  it  was,  but  the 
stench  of  it. 

Before  this  my  eyes  had  been  so  busy  re- 
cording impressions  that  my  nose  had  neglected 
its  duty;  now  for  the  first  time  I  sensed  the 
vile  reek  that  arose  from  all  about  me.  The 
place  was  one  big,  horrid  stink.  It  smelled 
of  ether  and  iodoform  and  carbolic  acid — • 
there  being  any  number  of  improvised  hospitals, 
full  of  wounded,  in  sight;  it  smelled  of  sour  beef 
bones  and  stale  bread  and  moldy  hay  and 
fresh  horse  dung;  it  smelled  of  the  sweaty 
bodies  of  the  soldiers;  it  smelled  of  everything 
that  is  fetid  and  rancid  and  unsavory  and  un- 
wholesome. 

And  yet,  forty-eight  hours  before,  this  town, 
if  it  was  like  every  other  Belgian  town,  must 
have  been  as  clean  as  clean  could  be.  When 
the  Belgian  peasant  housewife  has  cleaned  the 
inside  of  her  house  she  issues  forth  with  bucket 
and  scrubbing  brush  and  washes  the  outside 
of  it — and  even  the  pavement  in  front  and  the 
cobbles  of  the  road.  But  the  war  had  come  to 
La  Buissiere  and  turned  it  upside  down. 

A  war  wastes  towns,  it  seems,  even  more 
visibly  than  it  wastes  nations.  Already  the 
streets  were  ankle-deep  in  fiith.  There  were 
broken  lamps  and  broken  bottles  and  broken 
windowpanes  everywhere,  and  one  could  not 
[801 


SHERMAN    SAID    IT 


step  without  an  accompaniment  of  crunching 
glass  from  underfoot. 

Sacks  of  provender,  which  the  French  had 
abandoned,  were  split  open  and  their  contents 
wasted  in  the  mire  while  the  inhabitants  went 
hungry.  The  lower  floors  of  the  houses  were 
bedded  in  straw  where  the  soldiers  had  slept, 
and  the  straw  was  thickly  covered  with  dried 
mud  and  already  gave  off  a  sour-sickish  odor. 
Over  everything  was  the  lime  dust  from  the 
powdered  walls  and  plastering. 

We  drove  away,  then,  over  the  hill  toward 
the  south.  From  the  crest  of  the  bluff  we  could 
look  down  on  ruined  La  Buissiere,  with  its 
garrison  of  victorious  invaders,  its  frightened 
townspeople,  and  its  houses  full  of  maimed  and 
crippled  soldiers  of  both  sides. 

Beyond  we  could  see  the  fields,  where  the 
crops,  already  overripe,  must  surely  waste 
for  lack  of  men  and  teams  to  harvest  them; 
and  on  the  edge  of  one  field  we  marked  where 
the  three  peasants  dug  the  grave  for  the  rotting 
horse,  striving  to  get  it  underground  before 
it  set  up  a  plague. 

Except  for  them,  busy  with  pick  and  spade, 
no  living  creature  in  sight  was  at  work. 

Sherman  said  it! 


CHAPTER  IV 

MARSCH,  IVIARSCH,  MARSCH,  SO 
GEH'N  WIR  WEITER!" 


HAVE  you  ever  seen  three  hundred  thou- 
sand men  and  one  hundred  thousand 
horses  moving  in  one  compact,  mar- 
velous unit  of  organization,  discipHne 
and  system?  If  you  have  not  seen  it  you  can- 
not imagine  what  it  is  Hke.  If  you  have  seen 
it  you  cannot  tell  what  it  is  like.  In  one  case 
the  conceptive  faculty  fails  you;  in  the  other 
the  descriptive.  I,  who  have  seen  this  sight, 
am  not  foolish  enough  to  undertake  to  put  it 
down  with  pencil  on  paper.  I  think  I  know 
something  of  the  limitations  of  the  written 
English  language.  What  I  do  mean  to  try  to 
do  in  this  chapter  is  to  record  some  of  my 
impressions  as  I  watched  it. 

In  beginning  this  job  I  find  myself  casting 
about  for  comparisons  to  set  up  against  the 
vision  of  a  full  German  armj^  of  seven  army 
corps  on  the  march.  I  think  of  the  tales  I 
have  read  and  the  stories  I  have  heard  of  other 
[821 


"MARSCH.    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

great  armies:  Alaric's  war  bands  and  Attila's; 
the  First  Crusade;  Hannibal's  cohorts,  and 
Alexander's  host,  and  Csesar's  legions;  the 
Goths  and  the  Vandals;  the  million  of  Xerxes 
— if  it  was  a  million — and  Napoleon  starting 
for  Moscow. 

It  is  of  no  use.  This  Germanic  horde,  which 
I  saw  pouring  down  across  Belgium,  bound  for 
France,  does  not  in  retrospect  seem  to  me  a 
man-made,  man-managed  thing.  It  seems  more 
like  a  great,  orderly  function  of  Nature;  as  or- 
dained and  cosmic  as  the  tides  of  the  sea  or 
the  sweep  of  a  mighty  wind.  It  is  hard  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  ever  fashioned  of  thousands 
of  separate  atoms,  so  perfectly  is  it  welded 
into  a  whole.  It  is  harder  still  to  accept  it 
as  a  mutable  and  a  mortal  organism,  subject 
to  the  sliifts  of  chance  and  mischance. 

And  then,  on  top  of  this,  when  one  stops  to 
remember  that  this  army  of  three  hundred 
thousand  men  and  a  hundred  thousand  horses 
was  merely  one  single  cog  of  the  German  mili- 
tary machine;  that  if  all  the  German  war 
strength  were  assembled  together  you  might 
add  this  army  to  the  greater  army  and  hardly 
(know  it  was  there — why,  then,  the  brain  re- 
fuses to  wrestle  with  a  computation  so  gigantic. 
The  imagination  just  naturally  bogs  down  and 
quits. 

I  have  already  set  forth  in  some  detail  how 
it  came  to  pass  that  we  went  forth  from  Brus- 
sels in  a  taxicab  looking  for  the  war;  and  how 
[83] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


in  the  outskirts  of  Louvain  we  found  it,  and 
very  shortly  thereafter  also  found  that  we 
were  cut  off  from  our  return  and  incidentally 
had  lost  not  only  our  chauffeur  and  our  taxi- 
cab  but  our  overcoats  as  well.  There  being 
nothing  else  to  do  we  made  ourselves  comfort- 
able along  side  the  Belgian  Lion  Cafe  in  the 
southern  edge  of  Louvain,  and  for  hours  we 
watched  the  advance  guard  sliding  down  the 
road  through  a  fog  of  white  dust. 

Each  time  a  break  came  in  the  weaving  gray 
lines  we  fancied  this  surely  was  all.  All.^ 
What  we  saw  there  was  a  puny  dribbling 
stream  compared  with  the  torrent  that  was 
coming.  The  crest  of  that  living  tidal  wave 
was  still  two  days  and  many  miles  to  the  rear- 
ward. We  had  seen  the  head  and  a  little  of 
the  neck.  The  swollen  body  of  the  myriad- 
legged  gray  centipede  was  as  yet  far  behind. 

As  we  sat  in  chairs  tilted  against  the  wall 
and  watched,  we  witnessed  an  interesting  little 
side  play.  At  the  first  coming  of  the  German 
skirmishers  the  people  of  this  quarter  of  the 
town  had  seemed  stupefied  with  amazement 
and  astonishment.  Most  of  them,  it  subse- 
quently developed,  had  believed  right  up  to 
the  last  minute  that  the  forts  of  Liege  still 
held  out  and  that  the  Germans  had  not  yet 
passed  the  gateways  of  their  country,  many 
kilometers  to  the  eastward.  When  the  scouts 
of  the  enemy  appeared  in  their  streets  they  fell 
for  the  moment  into  a  stunned  state.  A  little 
[841 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

later  the  appearance  of  a  troop  of  Uhlans  had 
revived  their  resentment.  We  had  heard  that 
quick  hiss  and  snarl  of  hatred  which  sprang 
from  them  as  the  lancers  trotted  into  view 
on  their  superb  mounts  out  of  the  mouth  of  a 
neighboring  lane,  and  had  seen  how  instan- 
taneously the  dull,  malignant  gleam  of  gun 
metal,  as  a  sergeant  pulled  his  pistol  on  them, 
had  brought  the  silence  of  frightened  respect 
again. 

It  now  appeared  that  realization  of  the  num- 
ber of  the  invaders  was  breeding  in  the  Bel- 
gians a  placating  spirit.  If  a  soldier  fell  out 
of  line  at  the  door  of  a  house  to  ask  for  water, 
all  within  that  house  strove  to  bring  the  water 
to  him.  If  an  officer,  returning  from  a  small 
sortie  into  other  streets,  checked  up  to  ask  the 
way  to  rejoin  his  command,  a  dozen  eager  arms 
waved  in  chorus  to  point  out  the  proper  direc- 
tion, and  a  babble  of  solicitous  voices  arose 
from  the  group  about  his  halted  horse. 

Young  Belgian  girls  began  smiling  at  soldiers 
swinging  by  and  the  soldiers  grinned  back  and 
waved  their  arms.  You  might  almost  have 
thought  the  troops  were  Allies  passing  through 
a  friendly  community.  This  phase  of  the 
plastic  Flemish  temperament  made  us  marvel. 
When  I  was  told,  a  fortnight  afterward,  how 
these  same  people  fared  when  the  Germans 
for  reasons  best  known  to  themselves  or  for  no 
reason  at  all,  turned  on  them  and  brought 
about  the  ruination  of  their  city  and  the  sum^ 
[85  1 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


mary  executions  of  some  hundreds  of  the 
populace,  I  marveled  all  the  more. 

Presently,  as  we  sat  there,  we  heard — above 
the  rumbling  of  cannon  wheels,  the  nimble 
clunking  of  huriying  hoofs  and  the  heavy 
thudding  of  booted  feet,  falling  and  rising  all 
in  unison — a  new  note  from  overhead,  a  com- 
bination of  whir  and  flutter  and  whine.  We 
looked  aloft.  Directly  above  the  troops,  flying 
as  straight  for  Brussels  as  a  homing  bee  for 
the  hive,  went  a  military  monoplane,  serving 
as  courier  and  spy  for  the  crawling  columns 
below  it.  Directly,  having  gone  far  ahead,  it 
came  speeding  back,  along  a  lower  air  lane  and 
performed  a  series  of  circling  and  darting 
gyrations,  which  doubtlessly  had  a  signal-code 
meaning  for  the  troops.  Twice  or  three  times 
it  swung  directly  above  our  heads,  and  at  the 
height  at  which  it  now  evoluted  we  could 
plainly  distinguish  the  downward  curve  of  its 
wing-planes  and  the  peculiar  droop  of  the 
rudder — both  things  that  marked  it  for  an 
army  model.  We  could  also  make  out  the 
black  cross  painted  on  its  belly  as  a  further 
distinguishing  mark. 

To  me  a  monoplane  always  suggests  a  bird 
when  it  does  not  suggest  an  insect  or  a  winged 
reptile;  and  this  monoplane  particularly  sug- 
gested the  bird  type.  The  simile  which  oc- 
curred to  me  was  that  of  the  bird  which  guards 
the  African  rhinoceros;  after  that  it  was  doubly 
easy  to  conceive  of  this  army  as  a  rhinoceros, 
[861 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

having  all  the  brute  strength  and  brute  force 
which  are  a  part  of  that  creature,  and  its  well- 
armored  sides  and  massive  legs  and  deadly 
horned  head;  and  finally  its  peculiar  fancy  for 
charging  straight  at  its  objective  target,  tramp- 
ling down  all  obstacles  in  the  way. 

The  Germans  also  fancy  their  monoplane  as 
a  bird;  but  they  call  it  Tauhe — a  dove.  To  think 
of  calling  this  sinister  adjunct  of  warfare  a 
dove,  which  among  modern  peoples  has  always 
symbolized  peace,  seemed  a  most  terrible  bit 
of  sarcasm.  As  an  exquisite  essence  of  irony  I 
saw  but  one  thing  during  our  week-end  in 
Louvain  to  match  it,  and  that  was  a  big  van 
requisitioned  from  a  Cologne  florist's  shop  to 
use  in  a  baggage  train.  It  bore  on  its  sides 
advertisements  of  potted  plants  and  floral 
pieces — and  it  was  loaded  to  its  top  with  spare 
ammunition. 

Yet,  on  second  thought,  I  do  not  believe 
the  Prussians  call  their  war  monoplane  a  dove 
by  way  of  satire.  The  Prussians  are  a  serious- 
minded  race  and  never  more  serious  than  when 
they  make  war,  as  all  the  world  nov/  knows. 

Three  monoplanes  buzzed  over  us,  making 
sawmill  sounds,  during  the  next  hour  or  two. 
Thereafter,  whenever  we  saw  German  troops 
on  the  march  through  a  country  new  to  them 
we  looked  aloft  for  the  thing  with  the  droopy 
wings  and  the  black  cross  on  its  yellow  abdo- 
men. Sooner  or  later  it  appeared,  coming 
always  out  of  nowhere  and  vanishing  always 
[87] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


into  space.  We  were  never  disappointed.  It 
is  only  the  man  who  expects  the  German  army 
to  forget  something  needful  or  necessary  who 
is  disappointed. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  when  we  bade 
farewell  to  the  three-hundred-pound  proprie- 
tress of  the  Belgian  Lion  and  sought  to  reach 
the  center  of  the  town  through  byways  not 
yet  blocked  off  by  the  marching  regiments. 
When  we  were  perhaps  halfway  to  our  desti- 
nation we  met  a  town  bellman  and  a  towTi 
crier,  the  latter  being  in  the  uniform  of  a 
Garde  Civique.  The  bellringer  would  ply  his 
clapper  until  he  drew  a  crowd,  and  then  the 
Garde  Civique  would  halt  in  an  open  space  at 
the  junction  of  two  or  more  streets  and  read  a 
proclamation  from  the  burgomaster  calling  on 
all  the  inhabitants  to  preserve  their  tranquillity 
and  refrain  from  overt  acts  against  the  Germans, 
under  promise  of  safety  if  they  obeyed  and 
threat  of  death  at  the  hands  of  the  Germans 
if  they  disregarded  the  warning. 

This  word-of-mouth  method  of  spreading  an 
order  applied  only  to  the  outlying  sections. 
In  the  more  thickly  settled  districts,  where 
presumably  the  populace  could  read  and 
write,  proclamations  posted  on  wall  and  window 
took  its  place.  During  the  three  days  we 
stayed  in  Louvain  one  proclamation  succeeded 
another  with  almost  the  frequency  of  special 
extras  of  evening  newspapers  when  a  big  news 
story  breaks  in  an  American  city: 
[88] 


•MARSCH,    MARSCH.    MARSCH" 

The  citizens  were  to  surrender  all  firearms 
in  their  possession;  it  would  be  immediately 
fatal  to  him  if  a  man  were  caught  with  a  lethal 
weapon  on  his  person  or  in  his  house.  Trades- 
people might  charge  this  or  that  price  for  the 
necessities  of  life,  and  no  more.  All  persons, 
except  physicians  and  nurses  'in  the  discharge 
of  their  professional  duties,  and  gendarmes — 
the  latter  being  now  disarmed  and  entirely 
subservient  to  the  military  authorities — must 
be  off  the  streets  and  public  squares  at  a  given 
time — to  wit,  nine  p.  m.  Cafes  must  close  at 
the  same  hour.  Any  soldier  who  refused  to 
pay  for  any  private  purchase  should  be  imme- 
diately reported  at  headquarters  for  punish- 
ment. Upper  front  windows  of  all  houses  on 
certain  specified  streets  must  be  closed  and 
locked  after  nightfall,  remaining  so  until  day- 
light of  the  following  morning;  this  notice 
being  followed  and  overlapped  very  shortly 
by  one  more  amplifying,  which  prescribed  that 
not  only  must  front  windows  be  made  fast, 
but  all  must  have  lights  behind  them  and  the 
street  doors  must  be  left  unlocked. 

The  portent  of  this  was  simple  enough:  If 
any  man  sought  to  fire  on  the  soldiers  below 
he  must  first  unfasten  a  window  and  expose 
himself  in  the  light;  and  after  he  fired  admit- 
tance would  be  made  easy  for  those  who  came 
searching  for  him  to  kill  him. 

At  first  these  placards  were  signed  by  the 
burgomaster,  with  the  military  commandant's 
[89] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


indorsement,  and  sometimes  by  both  those 
functionaries;  but  on  the  second  day  there 
appeared  one  signed  by  the  commandant  only; 
and  this  one,  for  special  emphasis,  was  bounded 
by  wide  borders  printed  in  bright  red.  It 
stated,  with  cruel  brevity,  that  the  burgo- 
master, the  senator  for  the  district  and  the 
leading  magistrate  had  been  taken  into  custody 
as  hostages  for  the  good  conduct  of  their  con- 
stituents; and  that  if  a  civilian  made  any  at- 
tack against  the  Germans  he  would  forfeit 
his  own  life  and  endanger  the  lives  of  the  three 
prisoners.  Thus,  inch  by  inch,  the  conquerors, 
fearing,  I  suppose,  a  spirit  of  revolt  among  the 
conquered — a  spirit  as  yet  not  visible  on 
the  surface — took  typically  German  steps  to 
hold  the  people  of  Louvain  in  hobbles. 

It  was  when  we  reached  the  Y-shaped 
square  in  the  middle  of  things,  with  the  splen- 
did old  Gothic  town  hall  rising  on  one  side  of 
it  and  the  famous  Church  of  Saint  Pierre  at 
the  bottom  of  the  gore,  that  we  first  beheld  at 
close  hand  the  army  of  the  War  Lord.  Along- 
side the  Belgian  Lion  we  had  thought  it  best 
to  keep  our  distance  from  the  troops  as  they 
passed  obliquely  across  our  line  of  vision. 
Here  we  might  press  as  closely  as  we  pleased 
to  the  column.  The  magnificent  precision 
with  which  the  whole  machinery  moved  was 
astounding— I  started  to  say  appalling.  Three 
streets  converging  into  the  place  were  glutted 
with  men,  extending  from  curb  to  curb;  and 
[901 


"MARSCH.    MARSCH.    MARSCH" 

for  an  outlet  there  was  but  one  somewhat 
wider  street,  which  twisted  its  course  under 
the  gray  walls  of  the  church.  Yet  somehow 
the  various  lines  melted  together  and  went 
thumping  off  out  of  sight  like  streams  running 
down  a  funnel  and  out  at  the  spout. 

Never,  so  far  as  we  could  tell,  was  there 
any  congestion,  any  hitch,  any  suggestion  of 
confusion.  Frequently  there  would  come  from 
a  sideway  a  group  of  officers  on  horseback,  or 
a  whole  string  of  commandeered  touring  cars 
bearing  monocled,  haughty  staff  officers  in  the 
tonneaus,  with  guards  riding  beside  the  chauf- 
feurs and  small  slick  trunks  strapped  on 
behind.  A  whistle  would  sound  shrilly  then; 
and  magically  a  gap  would  appear  in  the  forma- 
tion. Into  this  gap  the  horsemen  or  the  im- 
perious automobiles  would  slip,  and  away  the 
column  would  go  again  without  having  been 
disturbed  or  impeded  noticeably.  No  stage 
manager  ever  handled  his  supers  better;  and 
here,  be  it  remembered,  there  were  uncountable 
thousands  of  supers,  and  for  a  stage  the  twist- 
ing, medieval  convolutions  of  a  strange  city. 

Now  for  a  space  of  minutes  it  would  be  in- 
fantry that  passed,  at  the  swinging  lunge  of 
German  foot  soldiers  on  a  forced  march.  Now 
it  would  be  cavalry,  with  accouterments 
jingling  and  horses  scrouging  in  the  close- 
packed  ranks;  else  a  battery  of  the  viperish 
looking  little  rapid-fire  guns,  or  a  battery  of 
heavier  cannon,  with  cloth  fittings  over  their 
[91] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Ugly  snouts,  like  muzzled  dogs  whose  bark  is 
bad  and  whose  bite  is  worse. 

Then,  always  in  due  order,  would  succeed 
the  field  telegraph  corps;  the  field  post-oflBce 
corps;  the  Red  Cross  corps;  the  brass  band  of, 
say,  forty  pieces;  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  to  the 
extent  of  a  thousand  and  one  circus  parades 
rolled  together.  There  were  boats  for  making 
pontoon  bridges,  mounted  side  by  side  on 
wagons,  with  the  dried  mud  of  the  River 
Meuse  still  on  their  flat  bottoms;  there  were 
baggage  trains  miles  in  length,  wherein  the 
supply  of  regular  army  wagons  was  eked  out 
with  nondescript  vehicles — even  family  car- 
riages and  delivery  vans  gathered  up  hastily, 
as  the  signs  on  their  sides  betrayed,  from  the 
tradespeople  of  a  dozen  Northern  German 
cities  and  towns,  and  now  bearing  chalk 
marks  on  them  to  show  in  what  division  they 
belonged.  And  inevitably  at  the  tail  of  each 
regiment  came  its  cook  wagons,  with  fires 
kindled  and  food  cooking  for  supper  in  the  big 
portable  ranges,  so  that  when  these  passed 
the  air  would  be  charged  with  that  pungent 
reek  of  burning  wood  which  makes  an  Ameri- 
can think  of  a  fire  engine  on  its  way  to  answer 
an  alarm. 

Once,  as  a  cook  perched  on  a  step  at  the  back 
of  his  wagon  bent  forward  to  stir  the  stew 
with  a  spoon  almost  big  enough  for  a  spade, 
I  saw  under  his  hiked-up  coat-tails  that  at 
the  back  of  his  gray  trousers  there  were  four 
[92] 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

suspender  buttons  in  a  row  instead  of  two. 
The  purpose  of  this  was  plain:  when  his  sus- 
penders chafed  him  he  might,  by  shifting  the 
straps  to  different  buttons,  shift  the  strain  on 
his  shoulders.  All  German  soldiers'  trousers 
have  this  extra  garnishment  of  buttons  aft. 

Somebody  thought  of  that.  Somebody 
thought  of  everything. 

We  in  America  are  accustomed  to  think  of 
the  Germans  as  an  obese  race,  swinging  big 
paunches  in  front  of  them;  but  in  that  army 
the  only  fat  men  we  saw  were  officers,  and 
not  so  many  of  them.  On  occasion,  some 
colonel,  beefy  as  a  brisket  and  with  rolls  of 
fat  on  the  back  of  his  close-shaved  neck, 
would  be  seen  bouncing  by,  balancing  his 
tired  stomach  on  his  saddle  pommel;  but, 
without  exception,  the  men  in  the  ranks  were 
trained  down  and  fine  drawn.  They  bent 
forward  under  the  weight  of  their  knapsacks 
and  blanket  rolls ;  and  their  middles  were  bulky 
with  cartridge  belts,  and  bulging  pockets 
covered  their  flanks. 

Inside  the  shapeless  uniforms,  however, 
their  limbs  swung  with  athletic  freedom,  and 
even  at  the  fag-end  of  a  hard  day's  marching, 
with  perhaps  several  hours  of  marching  yet 
ahead  of  them,  they  carried  their  heavy  guns 
as  though  those  guns  were  toys.  Their  fair 
sunburned  faces  were  lined  with  sweat  marks 
and  masked  under  dust,  and  doubtless  some 
were  desperately  weary;  but  I  did  not  see  a 
[93] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


straggler.  To  date  I  presume  I  have  seen  up- 
ward of  a  million  of  these  German  soldiers  on 
the  march,  and  I  have  yet  to  see  a  straggler. 

For  the  most  part  the  rank  and  file  were 
stamped  by  their  faces  and  their  limbs  as  being 
of  peasant  blood  or  of  the  petty  artisan  type; 
but  here  and  there,  along  with  the  butcher 
and  the  baker  and  the  candlestick  maker, 
passed  one  of  a  slenderer  build,  usually  spec- 
tacled and  wearing,  even  in  this  employment, 
the  unmistakable  look  of  the  cultured,  scholarly 
man. 

And  every  other  man,  regardless  of  his 
breed,  held  a  cheap  cigar  between  his  front 
teeth;  but  the  wagon  drivers  and  many  of  the 
cavalrymen  smoked  pipes — the  long-stemmed, 
china-bowled  pipe,  which  the  German  loves. 
The  column  moved  beneath  a  smoke-wreath  of 
its  own  making. 

The  thing,  however,  which  struck  one  most 
forcibly  was  the  absolute  completeness,  the 
perfect  uniformity,  of  the  whole  scheme.  Any 
man's  equipment  was  identically  like  any  other 
man's  equipment.  Every  drinking  cup  dangled 
behind  its  owner's  spine-tip  at  precisely  the 
same  angle;  every  strap  and  every  buckle 
matched.  These  Germans  had  been  run 
through  a  mold  and  they  had  all  come  out 
soldiers.  And,  barring  a  few  general  oflficers, 
they  were  all  young  men — men  yet  on  the 
sunny  side  of  thirty.  Later  we  were  to  see 
Dlenty  of  older  men — reserves  and  Landwehr — 
[94] 


"MARSCH.    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

but  this  was  the  pick  of  the  western  line  that 
passed  through  Louvain,  the  chosen  product  of 
the  active  wing  of  the  service. 

Out  of  the  narrow  streets  the  marchers 
issued;  and  as  they  reached  the  broader  space 
before  the  town  hall  each  company  would 
raise  a  song,  beating  with  its  heavy  boots  on 
the  paving  stones  to  mark  the  time.  Presently 
we  detected  a  mutter  of  resentment  rising 
from  the  troops;  and  seeking  the  cause  of  this 
we  discerned  that  some  of  them  had  caught 
sight  of  a  big  Belgian  flag  which  whipped  in 
the  breeze  from  the  top  of  the  Church  of  Saint 
Pierre.  However,  the  flag  stayed  where  it  had 
been  put  during  the  three  days  we  remained 
in  Louvain.  Seemingly  the  German  commander 
did  not  greatly  care  whose  flag  flew  on  the 
church  tower  overhead  so  long  as  he  held 
dominion  of  the  earth  below  and  the  dwellers 
thereof. 

Well,  we  watched  the  gray  ear- wig  wriggling 
away  to  the  westward  until  we  were  surfeited, 
and  then  we  set  about  finding  a  place  where 
we  might  rest  our  dizzy  heads.  We  could  not 
get  near  the  principal  hotels.  These  already 
were  filled  with  high  officers  and  ringed  about 
with  sentries;  but  half  a  mile  away,  on  the 
plaza  fronting  the  main  railroad  station,  we 
finally  secured  accommodations — such  as  they 
were — at  a  small  fourth-rate  hotel. 

It  called  itself  by  a  gorgeous  title — it  was 
the  House  of  the  Thousand  Columns,  which 
[95] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


was  as  true  a  saying  as  though  it  had  been 
named  the  House  of  the  One  Column;  for  it 
had  neither  one  column  nor  a  thousand,  but 
only  a  small,  dingy  beer  bar  below  and  some 
ten  dismal  living  rooms  above.  Established 
here,  we  set  about  getting  in  touch  with  the 
German  higher-ups,  since  we  were  likely  to  be 
mistaken  for  Englishmen,  which  would  be 
embarrassing  certainly,  and  might  even  be 
painful.  At  the  hotel  next  door — for  all  the 
buildings  flanking  this  square  were  hotels  of  a 
sort — we  found  a  group  of  officers. 

One  of  them,  a  tall,  handsome,  magnetic 
chap,  with  a  big,  deep  laugh  and  a  most  beau- 
tiful command  of  our  own  tongue,  turned  out 
to  be  a  captain  on  the  general  staff.  It  seemed 
to  him  the  greatest  joke  in  the  world  that  four 
American  correspondents  should  come  looking 
for  war  in  a  taxicab,  and  should  find  it  too. 
He  beat  himself  on  his  flanks  in  the  excess 
of  his  joy,  and  called  up  half  a  dozen  friends 
to  hear  the  amazing  tale;  and  they  enjoyed  it  too. 

He  said  he  felt  sure  his  adjutant  would  ap- 
preciate the  joke;  and,  as  incidentally  his  ad- 
jutant was  the  person  in  all  the  world  we  wanted 
most  just  then  to  see,  we  went  with  him  to 
headquarters,  which  was  a  mile  away  in  the 
local  Palais  de  Justice — or,  as  we  should  say 
in  America,  the  courthouse.  By  now  it  was 
good  and  dark;  and  as  no  street  lamps  burned 
we  walked  through  a  street  that  was  like  a 
tunnel  for  blackness. 

[96] 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

The  roadway  was  full  of  infantry  still  press- 
ing forward  to  a  camping  place  somewhere 
beyond  the  town.  We  could  just  make  out  the 
shadowy  shapes  of  the  men,  but  their  feet 
made  a  noise  like  thunderclaps,  and  they  sang 
a  German  marching  song  with  a  splendid  lilt 
and  swing  to  it. 

"Just  listen!"  said  the  captain  proudly. 
"They  are  always  like  that — they  march  all 
day  and  half  the  night,  and  never  do  they 
grow  weary.  They  are  in  fine  spirits — our 
men.  And  we  can  hardly  hold  them  back. 
They  will  go  forward — always  forward! 

"In  this  war  we  have  no  such  command  as 
Retreat!  That  word  we  have  blotted  out. 
Either  we  shall  go  forward  or  we  shall  die! 
We-  do  not  expect  to  fall  back,  ever.  The  men 
know  this;  and  if  our  generals  would  but  let 
them  they  would  run  to  Paris  instead  of  walk- 
ing there." 

I  think  it  was  not  altogether  through  vain- 
glory he  spoke.  He  was  not  a  bombastic  sort. 
I  think  he  but  voiced  the  supreme  arrogance 
of  the  army  to  which  he  belonged. 

At  the  Palais  de  Justice  the  adjutant  was 
not  to  be  seen;  so  our  guide  volunteered  to 
write  a  note  of  introduction  for  us.  Standing 
in  a  doorway  of  the  building,  where  a  light 
burned,  he  opened  a  small  flat  leather  pack 
that  swung  from  his  belt,  along  with  the  excel- 
lent map  of  Belgium  inclosed  in  a  leather  frame 
which  every  German  officer  carried.  We  mar- 
[97] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


veled  that  the  pack  contained  pencils,  pens, 
inkpot,  seals,  officially  stamped  envelopes  and 
note  paper,  and  blank  forms  of  various  devices. 
Verily  these  Germans  had  remembered  all 
things  and  forgotten  nothing.  I  said  Ihat  to 
myself  mentally  at  the  moment;  nor  have  I 
had  reason  since  to  withdraw  or  qualify  the 
remark. 

The  next  morning  I  saw  the  adjutant,  whose 
name  was  Renner  and  whose  title  was  that  of 
major;  but  first  I,  as  spokesman,  underwent  a 
search  for  hidden  weapons  at  the  hands  of  a 
secret  service  man.  Major  Renner  was  most 
courteous;  also  he  was  amused  to  hear  the  de- 
tails of  our  taxicabbing  expedition  into  his 
lines.  But  of  the  desire  which  lay  nearest 
our  hearts — to  get  back  to  Brussels  in  time 
haply  to  witness  its  occupation  by  the  Ger- 
mans— he  would  not  hear. 

"For  your  own  sakes,"  thus  he  explained  it, 
*'I  dare  not  let  you  gentlemen  go.  Terrible 
things  have  happened.  Last  night  a  colonel 
of  infantry  was  murdered  while  he  was  asleep; 
and  I  have  just  heard  that  fifteen  of  our  sol- 
diers had  their  throats  cut,  also  as  they  slept. 
From  houses  our  troops  have  been  fired  on, 
and  between  here  and  Brussels  there  has  been 
much  of  this  guerrilla  warfare  on  us.  To  those 
who  do  such  things  and  to  those  who  protect 
them  we  show  no  mercy.  We  shoot  them  on 
the  spot  and  burn  their  houses  to  the  ground. 

*'I  can  well  understand  that  the  Belgians 
[98] 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

resent  our  coming  into  their  country.  We  our- 
selves regret  it;  but  it  was  a  military  necessity. 
We  could  do  nothing  else.  If  the  Belgians  put 
on  uniforms  and  enroll  as  soldiers  and  fight  us 
openly,  we  shall  capture  them  if  we  can;  we 
shall  kill  them  if  we  must;  but  in  all  cases  we 
shall  treat  them  as  honorable  enemies,  fighting 
under  the  rules  of  civilized  warfare. 

"But  this  shooting  from  ambush  by  civi- 
lians; this  killing  of  our  people  in  the  night — 
that  we  cannot  endure.  We  have  made  a 
rule  that  if  shots  are  fired  by  a  civilian  from 
a  house  then  we  shall  burn  that  house;  and  we 
shall  kill  that  man  and  all  the  other  men  in 
that  house  whom  we  suspect  of  harboring  him 
or  aiding  him. 

"We  make  no  attempt  to  disguise  our 
methods  of  reprisal.  We  are  willing  for  the 
world  to  know  it;  and  it  is  not  because  I  wish 
to  cover  up  or  hide  any  of  our  actions  from 
your  eyes,  and  from  the  eyes  of  the  American 
people,  that  I  am  refusing  you  passes  for  your 
return  to  Brussels  to-day.  But,  you  see,  our 
men  have  been  terribly  excited  by  these  crimes 
of  the  Belgian  populace,  and  in  their  excite- 
ment they  might  make  serious  mistakes. 

"Our  troops  are  under  splendid  discipline, 
as  you  may  have  seen  already  for  yourselves. 
And  I  assure  you  the  Germans  are  not  a  blood- 
thirsty or  a  drunken  or  a  barbarous  people; 
but  in  every  army  there  are  fools  and,  what  is 
worse,  in  every  army  there  are  brutes.  You 
[991 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


are  strangers;  and  if  you  passed  along  the 
road  to-day  some  of  our  more  ignorant  men, 
seeing  that  you  were  not  natives  and  suspect- 
ing your  motives,  might  harm  you.  There 
might  be  some  stupid,  angry  common  soldier, 
some  over-zealous  under  officer — you  under- 
stand me,  do  you  not,  gentlemen? 

"So  you  will  please  remain  here  quietly, 
having  nothing  to  do  with  any  of  our  men 
who  may  seek  to  talk  with  you.  That  last  is 
important;  for  I  may  tell  you  that  our  secret- 
service  people  have  already  reported  your  pres- 
ence, and  they  naturally  are  anxious  to  make  a 
showing. 

"At  the  end  of  one  day — perhaps  two — we 
shall  be  able,  I  think,  to  give  you  safe  conduct 
back  to  Brussels.  And  then  I  hope  you  will 
be  able  to  speak  a  good  word  to  the  American 
public  for  our  army." 

After  this  fashion  of  speaking  I  heard  now 
from  the  lips  of  Major  Renner  what  I  subse- 
quently heard  fifty  times  from  other  army  men, 
and  liliewise  from  high  German  civilians,  of 
the  common  German  attitude  toward  Belgium. 
Often  these  others  have  used  almost  the  same 
words  he  used.  Invariably  they  have  sought 
to  convey  the  same  meaning. 

For  those  three  days  we  stayed  on  unwillingly 
in  Louvain  we  were  not  once  out  of  sight  of 
German  soldiers,  nor  by  day  or  night  out  of 
sound  of  their  threshing  feet  and  their  rum- 
bling wheels.  We  never  lookedj  this  way  or 
[100] 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

that  but  we  saw  their  gray  masses  blocking 
up  the  distances.  We  never  entered  shop  or 
house  but  we  found  Germans  already  there. 
We  never  sought  to  turn  off  the  main-traveled 
streets  into  a  byway  but  our  path  was  barred 
by  a  guard  seeking  to  know  our  business. 
And  always,  as  we  noted,  for  this  duty  those 
in  command  had  chosen  soldiers  who  knew  a 
smattering  of  French,  in  order  that  the  sentries 
might  be  able  to  speak  with  the  citizens.  If 
we  passed  along  a  sidewalk  the  chances  were 
that  it  would  be  lined  thick  with  soldiers 
lying  against  the  walls  resting,  or  sitting  on 
the  curbs,  with  their  shoes  off,  easing  their 
feet.  If  we  looked  into  the  sky  our  prospects 
for  seeing  a  monoplane  flying  about  were  most 
excellent.  If  we  entered  a  square  it  was  bound 
to  be  jammed  with  horses  and  packed  baggage 
trains  and  supply  wagons.  The  atmosphere 
was  laden  with  the  ropy  scents  of  the  boiling 
stews  and  with  the  heavier  smells  of  the  soldiers' 
unwashed  bodies  and  their  sweating  horses. 

And  the  shops,  nearly  always,  were  full  of 
German  customers.  Mainly  the  customers 
were  privates  and  non-commissioned  officers. 
All  of  them  appeared  to  be  well  provided  with 
spending  money ;  certainly  they  were  persistent 
patrons  of  the  smaller  retail  establishments  in 
the  town. 

The  postcard  venders  of  Louvain  must  have 
grown  fat  with  wealth;  for,  next  to  bottled  beer 
and  butter  and  cheap  cigars,  every  common 
[101] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


soldier  craved  postcards  above  all  other  com- 
modities. 

We  grew  tired  after  a  while  of  seeing  Ger- 
mans; it  seemed  to  us  that  every  vista  always 
had  been  choked  with  unshaved,  blond,  blocky, 
short-haired  men  in  rawhide  boots  and  ill- 
fitting  gray  tunics;  and  that  every  vista 
always  would  be.  It  took  a  new  kind  of  gun, 
or  an  automobile  with  a  steel  prow  for  charging 
through  barbed-wire  entanglements,  or  a  group 
of  bedraggled  Belgian  prisoners  plodding  wearily 
by  under  convoy,  to  make  us  give  the  spectacle 
more  than  a  passing  glance. 

There  was  something  hypnotic,  something 
tremendously  wearisome  to  the  mind  in  those 
thick  lines  fioYv'ing  sluggishly  along  in  streams 
Hke  molten  lead;  in  the  hedges  of  gun  barrels 
all  slanting  at  the  same  angle;  in  the  same 
types  of  faces  repeated  and  repeated  count- 
lessly;  in  the  legs  which  scissored  by  in  such 
faultless  unison  and  at  each  clip  of  each  pair 
of  living  shears  cut  off  just  so  much  of  the 
road — never  any  more  and  never  any  less,  but 
always  just  exactly  so  much. 

Our  jaded  and  satiated  fancies  had  been  fed 
on  soldiers  and  all  the  cumbersome  pageantry 
of  war  until  they  refused  to  be  quickened  by 
what,  half  a  week  before,  would  have  set  every 
nerve  tingling.  Almost  the  only  thing  that 
stands  out  distinct  in  my  memory  from  the 
confused  recollections  of  the  last  morning 
spent  in  Louvain  is  a  huge  sight-seeing  car — 
[102] 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

of  the  sort  known  at  home  as  a  rubberneck 
wagon — which  lumbered  by  us  with  Red  Cross 
men  perched  like  roosting  gray  birds  on  all  its 
seats.  We  estimated  we  saw  two  hundred 
thousand  men  in  motion  through  the  ancient 
town.  We  learned  afterward  we  had  under- 
figured  the  total  by  at  least  a  third. 

During  these  days  the  life  of  Lou  vain  went 
on,  so  far  as  our  alien  eyes  could  judge,  pretty 
much  as  it  probably  did  in  the  peace  times  pre- 
ceding. At  night,  obeying  an  order,  the  people 
stayed  within  their  doors;  in  the  daylight  hours 
they  pursued  their  customary  business,  not 
greatly  incommoded  apparently  by  the  pres- 
ence of  the  conqueror.  If  there  was  simmering 
hate  in  the  hearts  of  the  men  and  women  of 
Louvain  it  did  not  betray  itself  in  their  sobered 
faces.  I  saw  a  soldier,  somewhat  fuddled, 
seize  a  serving  maid  about  the  waist  and  kiss 
her;  he  received  a  slap  in  the  face  and  fell 
back  in  bad  order,  while  his  mates  cheered  the 
spunky  girl.  A  minute  later  she  emerged 
from  the  house  to  which  she  had  retreated, 
seemingly  ready  to  swap  slaps  for  kisses  some 
more. 

However,  from  time  to  time  sinister  sugges- 
tions did  obtrude  themselves  on  us.  For  ex- 
ample, on  the  second  morning  of  our  enforced 
stay  at  the  House  of  the  Thousand  Columns 
we  watched  a  double  file  of  soldiers  going 
through  a  street  toward  the  Palais  de  Justice. 
Two  roughly  clad  natives  walked  between  the 
[1031 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


lines  of  bared  bayonets.  One  was  an  old  man 
who  walked  proudly  with  his  head  erect.  He 
was  like  a  man  going  to  a  feast.  The  other 
was  bent  almost  double,  and  his  hands  were 
tied  behind  his  back. 

A  few  minutes  afterward  a  barred  yellow 
van,  under  escort,  came  through  the  square 
fronting  the  railroad  station  and  disappeared 
behind  a  mass  of  low  buildings.  From  that 
direction  we  presently  heard  shots.  Soon  the 
van  came  back,  unescorted  this  time;  and 
behind  it  came  Belgians  with  Red  Cross  arm 
badges,  bearing  on  their  shoulders  two  litters 
on  which  were  still  figures  covered  with  blan- 
kets, so  that  only  the  stockinged  feet  showed. 

Twice  thereafter  this  play  was  repeated, 
with  slight  variations,  and  each  time  we  Amer- 
icans, looking  on  from  our  front  windows,  drew 
our  own  conclusions.  Also,  from  the  same 
vantage  point  we  saw  an  automobile  pass 
bearing  a  couple  of  German  oflScers  and  a 
little,  scared-looking  man  in  a  frock  coat  and 
a  high  hat,  whose  black  mustache  stood  out 
like  a  charcoal  mark  against  the  very  white 
backgi'ound  of  his  face.  This  little  man,  we 
learned,  was  the  burgomaster,  and  this  day  he 
was  being  held  a  prisoner  and  responsible  for 
the  good  conduct  of  some  fifty-odd  thousand 
of  his  fellow  citizens.  That  night  our  host, 
a  gross,  silent  man  in  carpet  slippers,  told  us 
the  burgomaster  was  ill  in  bed  at  home. 

"He  suffers,"  explained  our  landlord  in 
[1041 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

French,   "from  a  crisis  of  the  nerves."     The 
French  language  is  an  expressive  language. 

Then,  coming  a  pace  nearer,  our  landlord 
added  a  question  in  a  cautious  whisper. 

"Messieurs,"  he  asked,  "do  you  think  it 
can  be  true,  as  my  neighbors  tell  me,  that 
the  United  States  President  has  ordered  the 
Germans  to  get  out  of  our  country.?" 

We  shook  our  heads,  and  he  went  silently 
away  in  his  carpet  slippers;  and  his  broad 
Flemish  face  gave  no  hint  of  what  corrosive 
thoughts  he  may  have  had  in  his  heart. 

It  was  Wednesday  morning  when  we  entered 
Louvain.  It  was  Saturday  morning  when  we 
left  it.  This  last  undertaking  was  preceded 
by  difficulties.  As  a  preliminary  to  it  we  vis- 
ited in  turn  all  the  stables  in  Louvain  where 
ordinarily  horses  and  wheeled  vehicles  could 
be  had  for  hire. 

Perhaps  there  were  no  horses  left  in  the  stalls 
— thanks  to  either  Belgian  foragers  or  to  Ger- 
man— or,  if  there  were  horses,  no  driver  would 
risk  his  hide  on  the  open  road  among  the  Ger- 
man pack  trains  and  rear  guards.  At  length 
we  did  find  a  tall,  red-haired  Walloon  vv^ho 
said  he  would  go  anywhere  on  earth,  and  pro- 
vide a  team  for  the  going,  if  we  paid  the  price 
he  asked.  We  paid  it  in  advance,  in  case  any- 
thing should  happen  on  the  way,  and  he  took 
us  in  a  venerable  open  carriage  behind  two 
crow-bait  skeletons  that  had  once,  in  a  happier 
day  when  hay  was  cheaper,  been  horses. 
[105] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


We  drove  slowly,  taking  the  middle  of  the 
wide  Brussels  road.  On  our  right,  traveling 
in  the  same  direction,  crawled  an  unending 
line  of  German  baggage  wagons  and  pontoon 
trucks.  On  our  left,  going  the  opposite  way, 
was  another  line,  also  unending,  made  up  of 
refugee  villagers,  returning  afoot  to  the  towns 
beyond  Louvain  from  which  they  had  fled 
four  days  earlier.  They  were  footsore  and  they 
limped;  they  were  of  all  ages  and  most  miser- 
able-looking. And,  one  and  all,  they  were  as 
tongueless  as  so  many  ghosts.  Thus  we 
traveled;  and  at  the  end  of  the  first  hour  came 
to  the  tiny  town  of  Leefdael. 

At  Leefdael  there  must  have  been  fighting, 
for  some  of  the  houses  were  gutted  by  shells. 
At  least  two  had  been  burned;  and  a  big  tin 
sign  at  a  railroad  crossing  had  become  a  tin 
colander  where  flying  lead  had  sieved  it.  In 
a  beet  patch  beside  one  of  the  houses  was  a 
mound  of  fresh  earth  the  length- of  a  long  man, 
with  a  cross  of  sticks  at  the  head  of  it.  A 
Belgian  soldier's  cap  was  perched  on  the  up- 
right and  a  scrap  of  paper  was  made  fast  to 
the  cross  arm;  and  two  peasants  stood  there 
apparently  reading  what  was  written  on  the 
paper.  Later  such  sights  as  these  were  to 
become  almost  the  commonest  incidents  of 
our  countryside  campaignings ;  but  now  we 
looked  with  all  our  eyes. 

Except  that  the  roadside  ditches  were  littered 
with  beer  bottles  and  scraps  of  paper,  and  the 
[106] 


"MARSCH,    MARSCH,    MARSCH" 

road  itself  rutted  by  cannon  wheels,  we  saw 
little  enough  after  leaving  Leefdael  to  suggest 
that  an  army  had  come  this  way  until  we  were 
in  the  outskirts  of  Brussels.  In  a  tree-edged, 
grass-plotted  boulevard  at  the  edge  of  the 
Bois,  toward  Tervueren,  cavalry  had  halted. 
The  turf  was  scarred  with  hoofprints  and 
strewed  with  hay;  and  there  was  a  row  of  small 
trenches  in  which  the  Germans  had  built  their 
fires  to  do  their  cooking.  The  sod,  which  had 
been  removed  to  make  these  trenches,  was 
piled  in  neat  little  terraces,  ready  to  be  put 
back;  and  care  plainly  had  been  taken  by  the 
troopers  to  avoid  damaging  the  bark  on  the 
trunks  of  the  ash  and  elm  trees. 

There  it  was — the  German  system  of  warfare ! 
These  Germans  might  carry  on  their  war  after 
the  most  scientifically  deadly  plan  the  world 
has  ever  known;  they  might  deal  out  their 
peculiarly  fatal  brand  of  drumhead  justice  to 
all  civilians  who  gave  color  of  offense  to  them; 
they  might  burn  and  waste  for  punishment; 
they  might  lay  on  a  captured  city  and  a 
whipped  province  a  tribute  of  foodstuffs  and 
an  indemnity  of  money  heavier  than  any  civil- 
ized race  has  ever  demanded  of  the  cowed  and 
conquered — might  do  all  these  things  and  more 
besides — but  their  troopers  saved  the  sods  of 
the  greensward  for  replanting  and  spared  the 
boles  of  the  young  shade  trees! 

Next  day  we  again  left  Brussels,  the  sub- 
missive, and  made  a  much  longer  excursion 
[107] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


under  German  auspices.  And,  at  length,  after 
much  travail,  we  landed  in  the  German  fron- 
tier city  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  where  I  wrote 
these  lines.  There  it  was,  two  days  after  our 
arrival,  that  we  heard  of  the  fate  of  Lou  vain 
and  of  that  pale  little  man,  the  burgomaster, 
who  had  survived  his  crisis  of  the  nerves  to 
die  of  a  German  bullet. 

We  wondered  what  became  of  the  proprietor 
of  the  House  of  the  Thousand  Columns;  and 
of  the  young  Dutch  tutor  in  the  Berlitz  School 
of  Languages,  who  had  served  us  as  a  guide 
and  interpreter;  and  of  the  pretty,  gentle 
little  Flemish  woman  who  brought  us  our  meals 
in  her  clean,  small  restaurant  round  the  corner 
from  the  Hotel  de  Ville;  and  of  the  kindly, 
red-bearded  priest  at  the  Church  of  Saint 
Jacques,  who  gave  us  ripe  pears  and  old  wine. 

I  reckon  we  shall  always  wonder  what  be- 
came of  them,  and  that  we  shall  never  know. 
I  hoped  mightily  that  the  American  wing  of 
the  big  Catholic  seminary  had  been  spared. 
It  had  a  stone  figure  of  an  American  Indian — 
looking  something  like  Sitting  Bull,  we  thought 
* — over  its  doors ;  and  that  was  the  only  typically 
American  thing  we  saw  in  all  Louvain. 

When  next  I  saw  Louvain  the  University 
was  gone  and  the  stone  Indian  was  gone  too. 


[108] 


CHAPTER  V 
BEING  A  GUEST  OF  THE  KAISER 


'OU  know  how  four  of  us  blundered  into 
the  German  lines  in  a  taxicab ;  and  how, 
getting  out  of  German  hands  after  three 
days  and  back  to  Brussels,  we  under- 
took, in  less  than  twenty-four  hours  thereafter, 
to  trail  the  main  forces  then  shoving  steadily 
southward  with  no  other  goal  before  them  but 
Paris. 

First  by  hired  hack,  as  we  used  to  say  when 
writing  accounts  of  funerals  down  in  Paducah, 
then  afoot  through  the  dust,  and  finally,  with 
an  equipment  consisting  of  that  butcher's  su- 
perannuated dogcart,  that  elderly  mare  emer- 
itus and  those  two  bicycles,  we  made  our 
zigzagging  way  downward  through  Belgium. 

We  knew  that  our  credentials  were,  for  Ger- 
man purposes,  of  most  dubious  and  uncertain 
value.  We  knew  that  the  Germans  were  per- 
mitting no  correspondents — not  even  German 
correspondents  —  to  accompany  them.  We 
[1091 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


knew  that  any  alien  caught  in  the  German 
front  was  hable  to  death  on  the  spot,  without 
investigation  of  his  motives.  We  knew  all 
these  things;  and  the  knowledge  of  them  gave 
:  a  fellow  tingling  sensations  in  the  tips  of  his 
I  toes  when  he  permitted  himself  to  think  about 
his  situation.  But,  after  the  first  few  hours,  we 
took  heart  unto  ourselves;  for  everywhere  we 
met  only  curiosity  and  not  hostility  at  the  hands 
'of  the  Kaiser's  soldiers,  men  and  officers  alike. 
There  was,  it  is  true,  the  single  small  instance 
of  the  excited  noncom.  who  poked  a  large,  un- 
wholesome-looking automatic  pistol  into  my 
shrinking  diaphragm  when  he  wanted  me  to 
get  off  the  running  board  of  a  military  auto- 
mobile into  which  I  had  climbed,  half  a  minute 
before,  by  invitation  of  the  private  who  steered 
it.  I  gathered  his  meaning  right  away,  even 
though  he  uttered  only  guttural  German  and 
that  at  the  top  of  his  voice;  a  pointed  revolver 
speaks  with  a  tongue  which  is  understood  by 
all  peoples.  Besides,  he  had  the  distinct  ad- 
vantage in  repartee;  and  so,  with  no  extended 
argument,  I  got  down  from  there  and  he 
pouched  his  ironmongery.  I  regarded  the  inci- 
dent as  being  closed  and  was  perfectly  willing 
that  it  should  remain  closed. 

That,  however,  though  of  consuming  inter- 
est to  me  at  the  moment,  was  but  a  detail — 
an  exception  to  prove  the  standing  rule.  One 
place  we  dined  with  a  Rittmeister  s  mess;  and 
while  we  sat,  eating  of  their  midday  ration  of 
11101 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


thick  pea  soup  with  sliced  sausages  in  it,  some 
of  the  younger  officers  stood;  also  they  let  us 
stretch  our  wearied  legs  on  their  mattresses, 
which  were  ranged  seven  in  a  row  on  the  parlor 
floor  of  a  Belgian  house,  where  from  a  corner 
a  plaster  statue  of  Joan  of  Arc  gazed  at  us 
with  her  plaster  eyes. 

Common  soldiers  offered  repeatedly  to  share 
their  rye-bread  sandwiches  and  bottled  beer 
with  us.  Not  once,  but  a  dozen  times,  officers 
of  various  rank  let  us  look  at  their  maps  and 
use  their  field  glasses;  and  they  gave  us  advice 
for  reaching  the  zone  of  actual  fighting  and 
swapped  gossip  with  us,  and  frequently  regret- 
ted that  they  had  no  spare  mounts  or  spare 
automobiles  to  loan  us. 

We  attributed  a  good  deal  of  this  to  a 
newborn  desire  on  the  part  of  these  men 
to  have  disinterested  journalists  see  with 
their  own  eyes  the  scope  and  result  of  the 
German  operations,  in  the  hope  that  more 
or  less  favorable  reports  regarding  the 
conduct  of  the  German  armies  in  this  par- 
ticular area  of  Belgium  might  reach  the 
outside   world   and   particularly   might   reach 

America.  Aiasif^^s^itS^i-ii^w*.   ^ 

Of  the  waste  and  wreckage  of  war;  of  deso- 
lated homes  and  shattered  villages;  of  the 
ruthless,  relentless,  punitive  exactness  with 
which  the  Germans  punished  not  only  those 
civilians  they  accused  of  firing  on  them  but 
those  they  suspected  of  giving  harbor  or  aid 
[111] 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


to  the  offenders;  of  widows  and  orphans;  of 
families  of  innocent  sufferers,  without  a  roof 
to  shelter  them  or  a  bite  to  stay  them;  of  fair 
lands  plowed  by  cannon  balls,  and  harrowed 
with  rifle  bullets,  and  sown  with  dead  men's 
bones;  of  men  horribly  maimed  and  mangled 
by  lead  and  steel;  of  long  mud  trenches  where 
the  killed  lay  thick  under  the  fresh  clods — of 
all  this  and  more  I  saw  enough  to  cure  any  man 
of  the  delusion  that  war  is  a  beautiful,  glorious, 
inspiring  thing,  and  to  make  him  know  it  for 
what  it  is — altogether  hideous  and  unutterably 
awful. 

As  for  Uhlans  spearing  babies  on  their  lances, 
and  officers  sabering  their  own  men,  and  sol- 
diers murdering  and  mutilating  and  torturing 
at  will — I  saw  nothing.  I  knew  of  these  tales 
only  from  having  read  them  in  the  dispatches 
sent  from  the  Continent  to  England,  and  still  ( 
later  in  the  report  of  the  Bryce  commission. 

Even  so,  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  Germans; 
or  for  the  reasons  that  inspired  them  in  begin- 
ning this  war;  or  for  the  fashion  after  which 
they  have  waged  it.  I  am  only  trying  to  tell 
w^hat  I  saw  with  my  own  eyes  and  heard  with 
my  own  ears. 

Be  all  that  as  it  may,  we  straggled  into  Beau- 
mont— five  of  us — on  the  evening  of  the  third 
day  out  from  Brussels,  without  baggage  or 
equipment,  barring  only  what  we  wore  on  our 
several  tired  and  drooping  backs.  As  in  the  case 
of  our  other  trip,  a  simple  sight-seeing  ride 
[112] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


had  resolved  itself  into  an  expeditionary  cam- 
paign; and  so  there  we  were,  bearing,  as  proof 
of  our  good  faith  and  professional  intentions, 
only  our  American  passports,  our  passes  issued 
by  General  von  Jarotzky,  at  Brussels,  and — 
most  potent  of  all  for  winning  confidence  from 
the  casual  eye — a  little  frayed  silk  American 
flag,  with  a  hole  burned  in  it  by  a  careless  cigar 
butt,  which  was  knotted  to  the  front  rail  of 
our  creaking  dogcart. 

Immediately  after  passing  the  ruined  and 
deserted  village  of  Montignies  St.  Christophe, 
we  came  at  dusk  to  a  place  where  a  company 
of  German  infantrymen  were  in  camp  about  a 
big  graystone  farmhouse.  They  were  cooking 
supper  over  big  trench  fires  and,  as  usual,  they 
were  singing.  The  light  shone  up  into  the  faces 
of  the  cooks,  bringing  out  in  ruddy  relief  their 
florid  skins  and  yellow  beards.  A  yearling  bull 
calf  was  tied  to  a  supply-wagon  wheel,  bellowing 
his  indignation.  I  imagine  he  quit  bellowing 
shortly  thereafter. 

An  officer  came  to  the  edge  of  the  road  and, 
peering  sharply  at  us  over  a  broken  hedge, 
made  as  if  to  stop  us;  then  changed  his  mind 
and  permitted  us  to  go  unchallenged.  Enter- 
ing the  town,  we  proceeded,  winding  our  way 
among  pack  trains  and  stalled  motor  trucks, 
to  the  town  square.  Our  little  cavalcade 
halted  to  the  accompaniment  of  good-natured 
titterings  from  many  officers  in  front  of  the 
town  house  of  the  Prince  de  Caraman-Chimay. 
[113] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


By  a  few  Americans  the  prince  is  remembered 
as  having  been  the  cousin  of  one  of  the  husbands 
of  the  much-married  Clara  Ward,  of  Detroit; 
but  at  this  moment,  though  absent,  he  had  par- 
ticularly endeared  himself  to  the  Germans 
through  the  circumstance  of  his  having  left 
behind,  in  his  wine  cellars,  twenty  thousand 
bottles  of  rare  vintages.  Wine,  I  believe,  is 
contraband  of  war.  Certainly  in  this  instance 
it  was.  As  w^e  speedily  discovered,  it  was  a 
very  unlucky  common  soldier  who  did  not 
have  a  swig  of  rare  Burgundy  or  ancient  claret 
to  wash  do'^Ti  his  black  bread  and  sausage  that 
night  at  supper. 

Unwittingly  we  had  bumped  into  the  head- 
quarters of  the  whole  army — not  of  a  single 
corps,  but  of  an  army.  In  the  thickening  twi- 
light on  the  little  square  gorgeous  staff  officers 
came  and  went,  afoot,  on  horseback  and  in 
automobiles;  and  through  an  open  window  we 
caught  a  glimpse  of  a  splendid-looking  general, 
sitting  booted  and  sword-belted  at  a  table  in 
the  Prince  de  Caraman-Chimay's  library,  with 
hunting  trophies— skin  and  horn  and  claw — 
looking  down  at  him  from  the  high-paneled 
oak  wainscotings,  and  spick-and-span  aides 
waiting  to  take  his  orders  and  discharge  his 
commissions. 

It  dawned  on  us  that,  having  accidentally 

slipped   through   a   hole   in   the    German   rear 

guard,   we  had  reached  a  point  close  to  the 

front  of  operations.     We  felt  uncomfortable. 

[114] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


It  was  not  at  all  likely  that  a  Herr  Over- 
Commander  would  expedite  us  with  the  gra- 
ciousness  that  had  marked  his  underlings  back 
along  the  line  of  communication.  We  re- 
marked as  much  to  one  another;  and  it  was  a 
true  prophecy.  A  stafiF  officer — a  colonel  who 
spoke  good  English — received  us  at  the  door 
of  the  villa  and  examined  our  papers  in  the 
light  which  streamed  over  his  shoulder  from  a 
fine  big  hallway  behind  him.  In  everything, 
both  then  and  thereafter,  he  was  most  polite. 

"I  do  not  understand  how  you  came  here, 
you  gentlemen,"  he  said  at  length.  "We  have 
no  correspondents  with  our  army." 

"You  have  now,"  said  one  of  us,  seeking  to 
brighten  the  growing  embarrassment  of  the 
situation  with  a  small  jape. 

Perhaps  he  did  not  understand.  Perhaps  it 
was  against  the  regulations  for  a  colonel,  in  full 
caparison  of  sword  and  shoulder  straps,  to 
laugh  at  a  joke  from  a  dusty,  wayworn,  shabby 
stranger  in  a  dented  straw  hat  and  a  wrinkled 
Yankee-made  coat.  At  any  rate  this  colonel 
did  not  laugh. 

"You  did  quite  right  to  report  yourselves 
here  and  explain  your  purposes,"  he  continued 
gravely;  "but  it  is  impossible  that  you  may  pro- 
ceed. To-morrow  morning  we  shall  give  you 
escort  and  transportation  back  to  Brussels. 
I  anticipate" — here  he  glanced  quizzically  at 
our  aged  mare,  drooping  knee-sprung  between 
the  shafts  of  the  lopsided  dogcart — "I  antici- 
[115] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


pate  that  you  will  return  more  speedily  than 
you  arrived. 

"You  will  kindly  report  to  me  here  in  the 
morning  at  eleven.  Meantime  remember, 
gentlemen,  that  you  are  not  prisoners — by  no 
means,  not.  You  may  consider  yourselves 
for  the  time  being  as — shall  we  sayi^ — guests 
of  the  German  Army,  temporarily  detained. 
You  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  come  and  go — 
only  I  should  advise  you  not  to  go  too  far, 
because  if  you  should  try  to  leave  town  to- 
night our  soldiers  would  certainly  shoot  you 
quite  dead.  It  is  not  agreeable  to  be  shot; 
and,  besides,  your  great  Government  might 
object.  So,  then,  I  shall  have  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  you  in  the  morning,  shall  I  not.'^  Yes.'^ 
Good  night,  gentlemen!" 

He  clicked  his  neat  heels  so  that  his  spurs 
jangled,  and  bowed  us  out  into  the  dark.  The 
question  of  securing  lodgings  loomed  large  and 
imminent  before  us.  Officers  filled  the  few 
small  inns  and  hotels;  soldiers,  as  we  could  see, 
were  quartered  thickly  in  all  the  houses  in 
sight;  and  already  the  inhabitants  were  lock- 
ing their  doors  and  dousing  their  lights  in 
accordance  with  an  order  from  a  source  that 
was  not  to  be  disobeyed.  Nine  out  of  ten 
houses  about  the  square  were  now  but  black 
oblongs  rising  against  the  gray  sky.  We  had 
nowhere  to  go;  and  yet  if  we  did  not  go  some- 
where, and  that  pretty  soon,  the  patrols  would 
undoubtedly  take  unpleasant  cognizance  of 
[116] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


our  presence.  Besides,  the  searching  chill  of 
a  Belgian  night  was  making  us  stiff. 

Scouting  up  a  narrow  winding  alley,  one  of 
the  party  who  spoke  German  found  a  court- 
yard behind  a  schoolhouse  called  imposingly 
L'Ecole  Moyenne  de  Beaumont,  where  he  ob- 
tained permission  from  a  German  sergeant  to 
stable  our  mare  for  the  night  in  the  aristocratic 
companionship  of  a  troop  of  officers'  horses. 
Through  another  streak  of  luck  we  preempted 
a  room  in  the  schoolhouse  and  held  it  against 
all  comers  by  right  of  squatter  sovereignty. 
There  my  friends  and  I  slept  on  the  stone  floor, 
with  a  scanty  amount  of  hay  under  us  for  a  bed 
and  our  coats  for  coverlets.  But  before  we 
slept  we  dined. 

We  dined  on  hard-boiled  eggs  and  stale  cheese 
— which  we  had  saved  from  midday — in  a  big, 
bare  study  hall  half  full  of  lancers.  They  gave  us 
rye  bread  and  some  of  the  Prince  de  Caraman- 
Chimay's  wine  to  go  with  the  provender  we 
had  brought,  and  they  made  room  for  us  at 
the  long  benches  that  ran  lengthwise  of  the 
room.  Afterward  one  of  them — a  master  musi- 
cian, for  all  his  soiled  gray  uniform  and  grimed 
fingers — played  a  piano  that  was  in  the  corner, 
while  all  the  rest  sang. 

It  was  a  strange  picture  they  made  there. 
On  the  wall,  on  a  row  of  hooks,  still  hung  the 
small  umbrellas  and  book-satchels  of  the 
pupils.  Presumably  at  the  coming  of  the 
Germans  they  had  run  home  in  such  a  pani« 
[117] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


that  they  left  their  school-traps  behind.  There 
were  sums  in  chalk,  half  erased,  on  the  black- 
board; and  one  of  the  troopers  took  a  scrap 
of  chalk  and  wrote  "On  to  Paris!"  in  big  let- 
ters here  and  there.  A  sleepy  parrot,  looking 
like  a  bundle  of  rumpled  green  feathers,  squat- 
ted on  its  perch  in  a  cage  behind  the  master's 
desk,  occasionally  emitting  a  loud  squawk  as 
though  protesting  against  this  intrusion  on  its 
privacy. 

When  their  wine  had  warmed  them  our  sol- 
dier-hosts sang  and  sang,  unendingly.  They 
had  been  on  the  march  all  day,  and  next  day 
would  probably  march  half  the  day  and  fight 
the  other  half,  for  the  French  and  English 
were  just  ahead;  but  now  they  sprawled  over 
the  school  benches  and  drummed  on  the  boards 
with  their  fists  and  feet,  and  sang  at  the  tops 
of  their  voices.  They  sang  their  favorite 
marching  songs  —  Die  Wacht  am  Rhein,  of 
course;  and  Deutschland,  Deutschland,  Uber 
Alles!  which  has  a  fine,  sonorous  cathedral 
swing  to  it;  and  God  Save  the  King! — with  dif- 
ferent words  to  the  air,  be  it  said;  and  Haltet 
Aus!  Also,  for  variety,  they  sang  Tannen- 
haum — with  the  same  tune  as  Maryland,  My 
Maryland! — and  Heil  dir  im  Sieges-kranz;  and 
snatches  from  various  operas. 

When  one  of  us  asked  for  Heine's  Lorelei 

they  sang  not  one  verse  of  it,  or  two,  but  twenty 

or   more;    and   then,    by    way    of   compliment 

to  the  guests  of  the  evening,  they  reared  upon 

[118] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


their  feet  and  gave  us  The  Star  Spangled  Banner, 
to  German  words.  Suddenly  two  of  them 
began  dancing.  In  their  big  rawhide  boots, 
with  hobbed  soles  and  steel-shod  heels,  they 
pounded  back  and  forth,  while  the  others 
whooped  them  on.  One  of  the  dancers  gave 
out  presently;  but  the  other  seemed  still  un- 
impaired in  wind  and  limb.  He  darted  into 
an  adjoining  room  and  came  back  in  a  minute 
dragging  a  half-frightened,  half-pleased  little 
Belgian  scullery  maid  and  whirled  her  about 
to  waltz  music  until  she  dropped  for  want  of 
breath  to  carry  her  another  turn;  after  which 
he  did  a  solo — Teutonic  version — of  a  darky 
breakdown,  stopping  only  to  join  in  the  next 
song. 

It  was  eleven  o'clock  and  they  were  still 
singing  when  we  left  them  and  went  groping 
through  dark  hallways  to  where  our  simple 
hay  mattress  awaited  us.  I  might  add  that 
we  were  indebted  to  a  corporal  of  lancers  for 
the  hay,  which  he  pilfered  from  the  feed  racks 
outside  after  somebody  had  stolen  the  two 
bundles  of  straw  one  of  us  had  previously  pur- 
chased. Except  for  his  charity  of  heart  we 
should  have  lain  on  the  cold  flagging. 

The  next  morning  was  Thursday  morning, 
and  by  Thursday  night,  at  the  very  latest,  we 
counted  on  being  back  in  Brussels ;  but  we  were 
not  destined  to  see  Brussels  again  for  nearly  six 
weeks.  We  breakfasted  frugally  on  good 
bread  and  execrable  coffee  at  a  half-wrecked 
[1191 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


little  cafe  where  soldiers  had  slept;  and  at 
eleven  o'clock,  when  we  had  bestowed  Bulotte, 
the  ancient  nag,  and  the  dogcart  on  an  ac- 
commodating youth — giving  them  to  him  as  a 
gracious  gift,  since  neither  he  nor  anyone  else 
would  buy  the  outfit  at  any  price — we  repaired 
to  the  villa  to  report  ourselves  and  start  on 
our  return  to  the  place  whence  we  had  come  so 
laboriously. 

The  commander  and  his  staff  were  just  leav- 
ing, and  they  were  in  a  big  hurry.  We  knew 
the  reason  for  their  hurry,  for  since  daylight 
the  sound  of  heavy  firing  to  the  south  and 
southwest,  across  the  border  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Maubeuge,  had  been  plainly  audible. 
OfScers  in.  long  gray  overcoats  with  facings  of 
blue,  green,  black,  yellow  and  four  shades  of  red 
— depending  on  the  branches  of  the  service  to 
which  they  belonged — were  piling  into  auto- 
m.obiles  and  scooting  away. 

As  we  sat  on  a  wooden  bench  before  the 
prince's  villa,  waiting  for  further  instructions 
from  our  friend  of  the  night  before — meaning 
by  that  the  colonel  who  could  not  take  a 
joke,  but  could  make  one  of  his  own — a  tall, 
slender  young  man  of  about  twenty-four,  with 
a  little  silky  mustache  and  a  long,  vulpine  nose, 
came  striding  across  the  square  with  long  steps. 
As  nearly  as  we  could  tell,  he  wore  a  colonel's 
shoulder  straps;  and,  aside  from  the  fact  that 
he  seemed  exceedingly  youthful  to  be  a  colonel, 
we  were  astonished  at  the  deference  that  was 
[1201 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


paid  him  by  those  of  higher  rank,  who  stood 
about  waiting  for  their  cars.  Generals,  and 
the  like,  even  grizzled  old  generals  with  breasts 
full  of  decorations,  bowed  and  clicked  before 
him;  and  when  he,  smiling  broadly,  insisted 
on  shaking  hands  with  all  of  them,  some  of  the 
group  seemed  overcome  with  gratification. 

Presently  a  sort  of  family  resemblance  in  his 
face  to  some  one  whose  picture  we  had  seen 
often  somewhere  began  to  impress  itself  on  us, 
and  we  wondered  who  he  was ;  but,  being  rather 
out  of  the  setting  ourselves,  none  of  us  cared 
to  ask.  Two  weeks  later,  in  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
I  was  passing  a  shop  and  saw  his  likeness  in 
full  uniform  on  a  souvenir  postcard  in  the 
window.  It  was  Prince  August  Wilhelm, 
fourth  son  of  the  Kaiser;  and  we  had  seen  him 
as  he  was  about  getting  his  first  taste  of  being 
under  fire  by  the  enemy. 

Pretty  soon  he  was  gone  and  our  colonel  was 
gone,  and  nearly  everybody  else  was  gone  too; 
Companies  of  infantry  and  cavalry  fell  in  and 
moved  off,  and  a  belated  battery  of  field  artil- 
lery rumbled  out  of  sight  up  the  twisting  main 
street.  The  field  postoffice  staff,  the  field 
'  telegraph  staff,  the  Red  Cross  corps  and  the 
wagon  trains  followed  in  due  turn,  leaving 
behind  only  a  small  squad  to  hold  the  town — 
and  us. 

A  tall  young  lieutenant  was  in  charge  of 
the  handful  who  remained;  and,  by  the  same 
token,  as  was  to  transpire,  he  was  also  in 
[121] 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


charge  of  us.  He  was  built  for  a  football 
player,  and  he  had  shoulders  like  a  Cyclops, 
and  his  family  name  was  Mittendorfer.  He 
never  spoke  to  his  men  except  to  roar  at  them 
like  a  raging  lion,  and  he  never  addressed  us 
except  to  coo  as  softly  as  the  mourning  dove. 
It  was  interesting  to  listen  as  his  voice  changed 
from  a  bellow  to  a  croon,  and  back  again  a 
moment  later  to  a  bellow.  With  training  he 
might  have  made  an  opera  singer — he  had  such 
a  vocal  range  and  such  perfect  control  over  it. 

This  Lieutenant  Mittendorfer  introduced 
himself  to  our  attention  by  coming  smartly  up 
and  saying  there  had  been  a  delay  about 
requisitioning  an  automobile  for  our  use;  but 
he  thought  the  car  would  be  along  very  shortly 
— and  would  the  American  gentlemen  be  so 
good  as  to  wait?  There  being  nothing  else  to 
do,  we  decided  to  do  as  he  suggested. 

We  chose  for  our  place  of  waiting  a  row  of 
seats  before  a  taveme,  and  there  we  sat,  side 
by  side,  keeping  count  of  the  guns  booming 
in  the  distance,  until  it  began  to  rain.  A  ser- 
geant came  up  then  and  invited  us  to  go  with 
him,  in  order  that  we  might  escape  a  wetting. 
He  waved  us  into  the  doorway  of  a  house 
two  doors  from  where  we  had  been  sitting,  at 
the  same  time  suggesting  to  us  that  we  throw 
away  our  cigars  and  cigarettes.  When  we 
crossed  the  threshold  we  realized  the  good 
intention  behind  this  advice,  seeing  that  the 
room  we  entered,  which  had  been  a  shop  of 
[122] 
/ 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


sorts,  was  now  an  improvised  powder  maga- 
zine. 

From  the  floor  to  the  height  of  a  man  it 
was  piled  with  explosive  shells  for  field  guns, 
cased  in  straw  covers  like  wine  bottles,  and 
stacked  in  neat  rows,  with  their  noses  all  point- 
ing one  way.  Our  guide  led  us  along  an  aisle 
of  these  deadly  things,  beckoned  us  through 
another  doorway  at  the  side,  where  a  sentry 
stood  with  a  bayonet  fixed  on  his  gun,  and 
with  a  wave  of  his  hand  invited  us  to  partake 
of  the  hospitalities  of  the  place.  We  looked 
about  us,  and  lo!  we  were  hard-and-fast  in  jail! 

I  have  been  in  pleasanter  indoor  retreats  in 
my  time,  even  on  rainy  afternoons.  The  room 
was  bedded  down  ankle-deep  in  straw;  and  the 
straw,  which  had  probably  been  fresh  the  day 
before,  already  gave  off  a  strong  musky  odor — 
the  smell  of  an  animal  cage  in  a  zoo. 

For  furnishings,  the  place  contained  a  bench 
and  a  large  iron  pot  containing  a  meat  stew, 
which  had  now  gone  cold,  so  that  a  rime  of 
gray  suet  coated  the  upper  half  of  the  pot. 
But  of  human  occupants  there  was  an  ample 
sufficiency,  considering  the  cubic  space  avail- 
able for  breathing  purposes.  Sitting  in  melan- 
choly array  against  the  walls,  with  their  legs 
half  buried  in  the  straw  and  their  backs  against 
the  baseboards,  were  eighteen  prisoners — two 
Belgian  cavalrymen  and  sixteen  Frenchmen — 
mostly  Zouaves  and  chasseurs-a-pied.  Also, 
there  were  three  Turcos  from  Northern  Africa, 
[123] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


almost  as  dark  as  negroes,  wearing  red  fezzes 
and  soiled  white,  baggy,  skirtlike  arrangements 
instead  of  trousers.  They  all  looked  very 
tired,  very  unhappy  and  very  sleepy. 

At  the  far  side  of  the  room  on  a  bench 
was  another  group  of  four  prisoners;  and 
of  these  we  knew  two  personally — Gerbeaux, 
a  Frenchman  who  lived  in  Brussels  and  served 
as  the  resident  Brussels  correspondent  of  a 
Chicago  paper;  and  Stevens,  an  American 
artist,  originally  from  Michigan,  but  who  for 
several  years  had  divided  his  time  between 
Paris  and  Brussels.  With  them  were  a  Belgian 
photographer,  scared  now  into  a  quivering  heap 
from  which  two  wall-eyes  peered  out  wildly, 
and  a  negro  chauffeur,  a  soot-black  Congo  boy 
who  had  been  brought  away  from  Africa  on  a 
training  ship  as  a  child.  He,  apparently,  was 
the  least-concerned  person  in  that  hole. 

The  night  before,  by  chance,  we  had  heard 
that  Gerbeaux  and  Stevens  were  under  deten- 
tion, but  until  this  moment  of  meeting  we  did 
not  know  their  exact  whereabouts.  They — 
the  Frenchman,  the  American  and  the  Belgian 
— had  started  out  from  Brussels  in  an  auto 
driven  by  the  African,  on  Monday,  just  a  day 
behind  us.  Because  their  car  carried  a  Red 
Cross  flag  without  authority  to  do  so,  and 
because  they  had  a  camera  with  them,  they 
very  soon  found  themselves  under  arrest,  and, 
what  was  worse,  under  suspicion.  Except  that 
for  two  days  they  had  been  marched  afoot  an 
[124] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


average  of  twenty-five  miles  a  day,  they  had 
fared  pretty  well,  barring  Stevens.  He,  being 
separated  from  the  others,  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  an  officer  who  treated  him  with  such 
severity  that  the  account  of  his  experiences 
makes  a  tale  worth  recounting  separately  and 
at  length. 

We  stayed  in  that  place  half  an  hour — one 
of  the  longest  half  hours  I  remember.  There 
was  a  soldier  with  a  fixed  bayonet  at  the  door, 
and  another  soldier  with  a  saw-edged  bayonet 
at  the  window,  which  was  broken.  Parties  of 
soldiers  kept  coming  to  this  window  to  peer 
at  the  exhibits  within;  and,  as  they  invariably 
took  the  civilians  for  Englishmen  who  had  been 
caught  as  spies,  we  attracted  almost  as  much 
attention  as  the  Turcos  in  their  funny  ballet 
skirts;  in  fact  I  may  say  we  fairly  divided  the 
center  of  the  stage  with  the  Turcos. 

At  the  end  of  half  an  hour  the  lieutenant 
bustled  in,  all  apologies,  to  say  there  had 
been  a  mistake  and  that  we  should  never 
have  been  put  in  with  the  prisoners  at  all. 
The  rain  being  over,  he  invited  us  to  come 
outside  and  get  a  change  of  air.  When  we  got 
outside  we  found  that  our  two  bicycles,  which 
we  had  left  leaning  against  the  curb,  were 
gone.    To  date  they  are  still  gone. 

Again  we  sat  waiting.  Finally  it  occurred 
to  us  to  go  inside  the  little  taverne,  where,  per- 
haps, we  should  be  less  conspicuous.  We  went 
in,  and  presently  we  were  followed  by  Lieu- 
[1251 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


tenant  Mittendorfer,  he  bringing  with  him  a 
tall  young  top-sergeant  of  infantry  who  carried 
his  left  arm  in  a  sling  and  had  a  three  weeks' 
growth  of  fuzzy  red  beard  on  his  chops.  It 
was  explained  that  this  top-sergeant,  Rosen- 
thal by  name,  had  been  especially  assigned  to 
be  our  companion — our  playfellow,  as  it  were — 
until  such  time  as  the  long-delayed  automobile 
should  appear. 

Sergeant  Rosenthal,  who  was  very  proud  of 
his  punctured  wrist  and  very  hopeful  of  getting 
a  promotion,  went  out  soon;  but  it  speedily 
became  evident  that  he  had  not  forgotten  us. 
For  one  soldier  with  his  gun  appeared  in  the 
front  room  of  the  place,  and  another  material- 
ized just  outside  the  door,  likewise  with  his 
gun.  And  by  certain  other  unmistakable 
signs  it  became  plain  to  our  perceptions  that 
as  between  being  a  prisoner  of  the  German  army 
and  being  a  guest  there  was  really  no  great 
amount  of  difference.  It  would  have  taken  a 
mathematician  to  draw  the  distinction,  so  fine 
it  was. 

We  stayed  in  that  taverne  and  in  the  small 
living  room  behind  it,  and  in  the  small  high- 
walled  courtyard  behind  the  living  room,  all 
that  afternoon  and  that  evening  and  that  night, 
being  visited  at  intervals  by  either  the  lieu- 
tenant or  the  sergeant,  or  both  of  them  at  once. 
We  dined  lightly  on  soldiers'  bread  and  some 
of  the  prince's  wine — furnished  by  Rosenthal — 
and  for  dessert  we  had  some  shelled  almonds 
[126] 


GUEST  OF    THE    KAISER 


and  half  a  cake  of  chocolate — furnished  by 
ourselves;  also  drinks  of  pale  native  brandy 
from  the  bar. 

During  the  evening  we  received  several 
bulletins  regarding  the  mythical  automobile. 
Invariably  Mittendorfer  was  desolated  to  be 
compelled  to  report  that  there  had  been  another 
slight  delay.  We  knew  he  was  desolated,  be- 
cause he  said  he  was.  During  the  evening, 
also,  we  met  all  the  regular  members  of  the 
household  living  under  that  much-disturbed 
roof.  There  was  the  husband,  a  big  lubberly 
Fleming  who  apparently  did  not  count  for 
much  in  the  economic  and  domestic  scheme  of 
the  establishment;  his  wife,  a  large,  command- 
ing woman  who  ran  the  business  and  the  house 
as  well;  his  wife's  mother,  an  old  sickly  woman 
in  her  seventies;  and  his  wife's  sister,  a  poor, 
palsied  half-wit. 

When  the  sister  was  a  child,  so  we  heard, 
she  had  been  terribly  frightened,  so  that  to 
this  day,  still  frightened,  she  crept  about,  a 
pale  shadow,  quivering  all  over  pitiably  at 
every  sound.  She  would  stand  behind  a  door 
for  minutes  shaking  so  that  you  could  hear 
her  knuckles  knocking  against  the  wall.  She 
seemed  particularly  to  dread  the  sight  of  the 
German  privates  who  came  and  went;  and 
they,  seeing  this,  were  kind  to  her  in  a  clumsy, 
awkward  way.  Hourly,  like  a  ghost  she 
drifted  in  and  out. 

For  a  while  it  looked  as  though  we  should 
[1271 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


spend  the  night  sitting  up  in  chairs;  but 
about  ten  o'clock  three  soldiers,  led  by  Rosen- 
thal and  accompanied  by  the  landlady,  went 
out;  and  when  they  came  back  they  brought 
some  thick  feather  mattresses  which  had  been 
commandeered  from  neighboring  houses,  we 
judged.  Also,  through  the  goodness  of  his 
heart,  Mittendorfer,  who  impressed  us  more  and 
more  as  a  strange  compound  of  severity  and 
softness,  took  pity  on  Gerbeaux  and  Stevens, 
and  bringing  them  forth  from  that  pestilential 
hole  next  door,  he  convoyed  them  in  to  stay 
overnight  with  us.  They  told  us  that  by  now 
the  air  in  the  improvised  prison  was  abso- 
lutely suffocating,  what  with  the  closeness, 
the  fouled  straw,  the  stale  food  and  the  prox- 
imity of  so  many  dirty  human  bodies  all 
packed  into  the  kennel  together. 

Ten  of  us  slept  on  the  floor  of  that  little 
grogshop — the  five  of  our  party  lying  spoon- 
fashion  on  two  mattresses,  Gerbeaux  and 
Stevens  making  seven,  and  three  soldiers. 
The  soldiers  relieved  each  other  in  two-hour 
spells,  so  that  while  two  of  them  snored  by 
the  door  the  third  sat  in  a  chair  in  the  middle 
of  the  room,  with  his  rifle  between  his  knees, 
and  a  shaded  lamp  and  a  clock  on  a  table  at 
his  elbow.  Just  before  we  turned  in,  Rosen- 
thal, who  had  adopted  a  paternal  tone  to  the 
three  guards,  each  of  whom  was  many  years 
older  than  he,  addressed  them  softly,  saying: 

"Now,  my  children,  make  yourselves  com- 
[128] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


fortable.  Drink  what  you  please;  but  if  any 
one  of  you  gets  drunk  I  shall  take  pleasure  in 
seeing  that  he  gets  from  seven  to  nine  years 
in  prison  at  hard  labor."  For  which  they 
thanked  him  gratefully  in  chorus. 

I  am  not  addicted  to  the  diary-keeping 
habit,  but  during  the  next  day,  which  was 
Friday,  I  made  fragmentary  records  of  things 
in  a  journal,  from  which  I  now  quote  verba- 
tim: 

Seven-thirty  a.  m.— about.  After  making  a 
brief  toilet  by  sousing  our  several  faces  in  a 
pail  of  water,  we  have  just  breakfasted— 
sketchily — on  wine  and  almonds.  It  would 
seem  that  the  German  army  feeds  its  prisoners, 
but  makes  no  such  provision  for  its  guests. 
On  the  whole  I  think  I  should  prefer  being  a 
prisoner. 

We  have  offered  our  landlady  any  amount 
within  reason  for  a  pot  of  coffee  and  some 
toasted  bread;  but  she  protests,  calling  on 
Heaven  to  witness  the  truth  of  her  words, 
that  there  is  nothing  to  eat  in  the  house — 
that  the  Germans  have  eaten  up  all  her  store 
of  food,  and  that  her  old  mother  is  already 
beginning  to  starve.  Yet  certain  appetizing 
smells,  which  come  down  the  staircase  from  up- 
stairs when  the  door  is  opened,  lead  me  to 
believe  she  is  deceiving  us.  I  do  not  blame 
her  for  treasuring  what  she  has  for  her  own 
flesh  and  blood;  but  I  certainly  could  enjoy 
a  couple  of  fried  eggs. 

[1£9] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


Nine  a.  m.  Mittendorfer  has  been  in,  with 
vague  remarks  concerning  our  automobile. 
Something  warns  me  this  young  man  is  trifling 
with  us.  He  appears  to  be  a  practitioner  of 
the  Japanese  school  of  diplomacy — that  is, 
he  believes  it  is  better  to  pile  one  gentle, 
transparent  fiction  on  another  until  the  pyra- 
mid of  romance  falls  of  its  own  weight,  rather 
than  to  break  the  cruel  news  at  a  single  blow. 

Eleven-twenty.  One  of  the  soldiers  has 
brought  us  half  a  dozen  bottles  of  good  wine — 
three  bottles  of  red  and  three  of  white — but 
the  larder  remains  empty.  I  do  not  know 
exactly  what  a  larder  is;  but  if  it  is  as  empty 
as  I  am  at  the  present  moment  it  must  remind 
itself  of  a  haunted  house. 

Eleven-forty.  A  big  van  full  of  wounded 
Germans  has  arrived.  From  the  windows  we 
can  see  it  distinctly.  The  more  seriously  hurt 
lie  on  the  bed  of  the  wagon,  under  the  hood. 
The  man  who  drives  has  one  leg  in  splints; 
and  of  the  two  who  sit  at  the  tail  gate,  holding 
rifles  upright,  one  has  a  bandaged  head,  and 
the  other  has  an  arm  in  a  sling. 

Unless  a  German  is  so  seriously  crippled 
as  to  be  entirely  unfitted  for  service  he  man- 
ages to  do  something  useful.  There  are  no 
loose  ends  and  no  waste  to  the  German  mili- 
tary system;  I  can  see  that.  The  soldiers  in 
the  street  cheer  the  wounded  as  they  pass 
and  the  wounded  answer  by  singing  Die  Wacht 
am  Rhein  feebly. 

[130] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


One  poor  chap  raises  his  head  and  looks 
out.  He  appears  to  be  almost  spent,  but 
I  see  his  lips  move  as  he  tries  to  sing.  You 
'  can  not  care  for  the  German  cause,  but  you 
are  bound  to  admire  the  German  spirit — the 
German  oneness  of  purpose. 

Noon.  As  the  Texas  darky  said:  "Dinner- 
time fur  some  folks;  but  just  twelve  o'clock 
fur  me!"  Again  I  smell  something  cooking 
upstairs.  On  the  mantel  of  the  shabby  little 
interior  sitting  room,  where  we  spend  most 
of  our  time  sitting  about  in  a  sad  circle,  is  a 
little  black-and-tan  terrier  pup,  stuffed  and 
mounted,  with  shiny  glass  eyes — a  family 
pet,  I  take  it,  which  died  and  was  immortal- 
ized by  the  local  taxidermist.  If  I  only  knew 
what  that  dog  was  stuffed  with  I  would  take 
a  chance  and  eat  him. 

I  have  a  fellow  feeling  for  Arctic  explorers 
who  go  north  and  keep  on  going  until  they 
run  out  of  things  to  eat.  I  admire  their  hero- 
ism and  sympathize  with  their  sufferings,  but 
I  deplore  their  bad  judgment.  There  are 
grapes  growing  on  trellises  in  the  little  court- 
yard at  the  back,  but  they  are  too  green  for 
human  consumption.  I  speak  authoritatively 
on  this  subject,  having  just  sampled  one. 

Two  p.  M.  Tried  to  take  a  nap,  but  failed. 
Hansen  found  a  soiled  deck  of  cards  behind 
a  pile  of  books  on  the  mantelpiece,  and  we 
all  cheered  up,  thinking  of  poker;  but  it  was 
a  Belgian  deck  of  thirty-two  cards,  all  the 
[131] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


pips  below  the  seven-spot  being  eliminated. 
Poker  with  that  deck  would  be  a  hazardous 
pursuit. 

McCutcheon  remarks  casually  that  he  won- 
ders what  would  happen  if  somebody  acci- 
dentally touched  off  those  field-gun  shells  in 
the  house  two  doors  away.  We  suddenly 
remember  that  they  are  all  pointed  our  way! 
The  conversation  seems  to  lull,  and  Mac,  for 
the  time  being,  loses  popularity. 

Two-thirty  p.  m.  Looking  out  on  the 
dreary  little  square  of  this  town  of  Beau- 
mont I  note  that  the  natives,  who  have  been 
scarce  enough  all  daj',  have  now  vanished 
almost  entirely;  whereas  soldiers  are  notice- 
ably more  numerous  than  they  were  this  morn- 

Three-fifteen  p.  m.  Heard  a  big  noise  in 
the  street  and  ran  to  the  window  in  time  to 
see  about  forty  English  prisoners  passing 
under  guard — the  first  English  soldiers  I  have 
seen,  in  this  campaign,  either  as  prisoners  or 
otherwise.  Their  tan  khaki  uniforms  and 
flat  caps  give  them  a  soldierly  look  very  un- 
like the  slovenly,  sloppy-appearing  French 
prisoners  in  the  guardhouse;  but  they  appear 
to  be  tremendously  do^iicast.  The  German 
soldiers  crowd  up  to  stare  at  them,  but  there 
is  no  jeering  or  taunting  from  the  Germans. 
These  prisoners  are  all  infantrymen,  judging 
by  their  uniforms.  They  disappear  through 
the  gateway  of  the  prince's  park. 
[132] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


Three-forty,  I  have  just  had  some  exer- 
cise; walked  from  the  front  door  to  the  court- 
yard and  back.  There  are  two  guards  outside 
the  door  now  instead  of  one.  The  German 
army  certainly  takes  mighty  good  care  of  its 
guests. 

This  day  has  been  as  long  as  Gibbon's 
"Decline  and  Fall,"  and  much  more  tiresome. 
No;  I'll  take  that  back;  it  is  not  strong  enough. 
This  day  has  been  as  long  as  the  entire  Chris- 
tian Era. 

Four  p.  M.  Gerbeaux,  who  was  allowed 
to  go  out  foraging,  under  escort  of  a  guard, 
has  returned  with  a  rope  of  dried  onions; 
a  can  of  alphabet  noodles;  half  a  pound  of 
stale,  crumbly  macaroons;  a  few  fresh  string 
beans;  a  pot  of  strained  honey,  and  several 
clean  collars  of  assorted  sizes.  The  woman 
of  the  house  is  now  making  soup  for  us  out 
of  the  beans,  the  onions  and  the  noodles. 
She  has  also  produced  a  little  grated  Par- 
mesan cheese  from  somewhere. 

Four-twenty  p.  m.  That  was  the  best  soup 
I  ever  tasted,  even  if  it  was  full  of  typo- 
graphical errors  from  the  jumbling  together 
of  the  little  alphabet  noodles.  Still,  nobody 
but  a  proofreader  could  have  found  fault 
with  that.  There  was  only  one  trouble  with 
that  soup:  there  was  not  enough  of  it — just 
one  bowl  apiece.  I  would  have  traded  the 
finest  case  of  vintage  wine  in  the  Chimay 
vaults  for  another  bowl. 
[133] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Just  as  the  woman  brought  in  the  soup 
Mittendorfer  appeared,  escorting  a  French 
lieutenant  who  was  taken  prisoner  this  morn- 
ing. The  prisoner  was  a  Httle,  handsome, 
dapper  chap  not  over  twenty-two  years  old, 
wearing  his  trim  blue-and-red  uniform  with 
an  air,  even  though  he  himseK  looked  thor- 
oughly miserable.  We  were  warned  not  to 
speak  with  him,  or  he  with  us;  but  Gerbeaux, 
after  listening  to  him  exchanging  a  few  words 
with  the  lieutenant,  said  he  judged  from  his 
accent  that  the  little  officer  was  from  the 
south  of  France. 

We  silently  offered  him  a  bowl  of  the  soup 
as  he  sat  in  a  corner  fenced  off  from  the  rest 
of  us  by  a  small  table;  but  he  barely  tasted 
it,  and  after  a  bit  he  lay  down  in  his  corner, 
with  his  arm  for  a  pillow,  and  almost  in- 
stantly was  asleep,  breathing  heavily,  like  a 
man  on  the  verge  of  exhaustion.  A  few  min- 
utes later  we  heard,  from  Sergeant  Rosenthal, 
that  the  prisoner's  brother-in-law  had  been 
killed  the  day  before,  and  that  he — the  little 
officer — had  seen  the  brother-in-law  fall. 

Five  p.  M.  We  have  had  good  news — two 
chunks  of  good  news,  in  fact.  We  are  to 
I  dine  and  we  are  to  travel.  The  sergeant  has 
acquired,  from  unknown  sources,  a  brace  of 
small,  skinny,  fresh-killed  pullets;  eight  fresh 
eggs;  a  big  loaf  of  the  soggy  rye  bread  of  the 
field  mess;  and  wine  unlimited.  Also,  we  are 
told  that  at  nine  o'clock  we  are  to  start  for 
[1341 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


Brussels — not  by  automobile,  but  aboard  a 
train  carrying  wounded  and  prisoners  north- 
ward. 

Everybody  cheers  up,  especially  after  ma- 
dame  promises  to  have  the  fowls  and  the  eggs 
ready  in  less  than  an  hour. 

The  Belgian  photographer,  who,  it  de- 
velops, is  to  go  with  our  troop,  has  been 
brought  in  from  the  guardhouse  and  placed 
with  us.  With  the  passing  hours  his  fright 
has  increased.  Gerbeaux  says  the  poor  devil 
is  one  of  the  leading  photographers  of  Brus- 
sels— that  by  royal  appointment  he  takes 
pictures  of  the  queen  and  her  children.  But 
the  queen  would  have  trouble  in  recognizing 
her  photographer  if  she  could  see  him  now — 
with  straw  in  his  tousled  hair,  and  his  jaw 
lolling  under  the  weight  of  his  terror,  and 
his  big,  wild  eyes  staring  this  way  and  that. 
Nothing  that  Gerbeaux  can  say  to  him  will 
dissuade  him  from  the  belief  that  the  Ger- 
mans mean  to  shoot  him. 

I  almost  forgot  to  detail  a  thing  that  oc- 
curred a  few  minutes  ago,  just  before  the 
Belgian  joined  us.  Mittendorfer  brought  a 
message  for  the  little  French  lieutenant.  The 
Frenchman  roused  up  and,  after  they  had 
saluted  each  other  ceremoniously,  Mittendorfer 
told  him  he  had  come  to  invite  him  to  dine 
with  a  mess  of  German  officers  across  the  way, 
in  the  town  hall. 

On  the  way  out  he  stopped  to  speak  with 
1135] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Sergeant  Rosenthal  who,  having  furnished 
the  provender  for  the  forthcoming  feast,  was 
now  waiting  to  share  in  it.  Using  German, 
the  lieutenant  said: 

"I'm  being  kept  pretty  busy.  Two  citi- 
zens of  this  town  have  just  been  sentenced 
to  be  shot,  and  I've  orders  to  go  and  attend 
to  the  shooting  before  it  gets  too  dark  for 
the  firing  squad  to  see  to  aim," 

Rosenthal  did  not  ask  of  what  crime  the 
condemned  two  had  been  convicted. 

"You  had  charge  of  another  execution  this 
morning,  didn't  you-f^"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  answered  the  lieutenant;  "a  couple 
— man  and  wife.  The  man  was  seventy-four 
years  old  and  the  woman  was  seventy-two. 
It  was  proved  against  them  that  they  put  poi- 
soned sugar  in  the  coffee  for  some  of  our  soldiers. 
You  heard  about  the  case,  didn't  you?" 

"I  heard  something  about  it,"  said  Rosenthal. 

That  was  all  they  said.  And  the  way  in 
which  thej^  said  it  and  the  fact  that  they  said  no 
more,  either  of  them,  set  up  a  suspicion  in  my 
mind.  The  hideous  thing  may  have  happened 
although  it  doesn't  sound  plausible.  Then 
again  on  the  other  hand  our  two  gaolers  may  be 
engaged  in  playing  out  for  our  benefit,  a  little 
piece  devised  and  rehearsed  beforehand — a 
scheme  designed  to  make  us  believe  that  the 
Belgians  are  murdering  Germans  by  every 
means  within  their  power  and  that  the  Ger- 
mans are  amply  justified  for  the  punitive 
[1361 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


measures  of  reprisal  they  are  taking  among  the 
civihan  populace  of  the  land. 

Six-fifteen  p.  M.  We  have  dined.  The 
omelet  was  a  very  small  omelet,  and  two 
skinny  pullets  do  not  go  far  among  nine 
hungry  men;  still,  we  have  dined. 

My  journal  breaks  off  with  this  entry.  It 
broke  off  because  immediately  after  dinner 
word  came  that  our  train  was  ready.  A  few 
minutes  before  we  left  the  taverne  for  the 
station,  to  start  on  a  trip  that  was  to  last 
two  days  instead  of  three  hours,  and  land 
us  not  in  Brussels,  but  on  German  soil  in 
Aix-Ia-Chapelle,  two  incidents  happened  which 
afterward,  in  looking  back  on  the  experience, 
I  have  found  most  firmly  clinched  in  my 
memory:  A  German  captain  came  into  the 
place  to  get  a  drink;  he  recognized  me  as  an 
American  and  hailed  me,  and  wanted  to  know 
my  business  and  whether  I  could  give  him 
any  news  from  the  outside  world.  I  remarked 
on  the  perfection  of  his  English. 

"I  suppose  I  come  by  it  naturally,"  he 
said.  "I  call  myself  a  German,  but  I  was 
born  in  Nashville,  Tennessee,  and  partly 
reared  in  New  Jersey,  and  educated  at  Prince- 
ton; and  at  this  moment  I  am  a  member  of 
the  New  York  Cotton  Exchange." 

Right  after  this  three  Belgian  peasants, 
all  half-grown  boys,  were  brought  in.  They 
had  run  away  from  their  homes  at  the  com- 
ing of  the  Germans,  and  for  three  days  had 
[137] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


been   hiding   in   thickets,    without   food,    until 
finally  hunger  and  cold  had  driven  them  in. 

All  of  them  were  in  sorry  case  and  one  was 
in  collapse.  He  trembled  so  his  whole  body 
shook  like  jelly.  The  landlady  gave  him 
some  brandy,  but  the  burning  stuff  choked 
his  throat  until  it  closed  and  the  brandy  ran 
out  of  his  quivering  blue  lips  and  spilled  on 
his  chin.  Seeing  this,  a  husky  German  private, 
who  looked  as  though  in  private  life  he  might 
be  a  piano  mover,  brought  out  of  his  blanket 
roll  a  bottle  of  white  wine  and,  holding  the 
scared,  exhausted  lad  against  his  chest,  min- 
istered to  him  with  all  gentleness,  and  gave 
him  sips  of  the  wine.  In  the  line  of  duty  I 
know  he  would  have  shot  that  boy  with  the 
same  cheerful  readiness. 

Just  as  we  were  filing  out  into  the  dark. 
Sergeant  Rosenthal,  who  was  also  going  along, 
halted  us  and  reminded  us  all  and  severally 
that  we  were  not  prisoners,  but  still  guests; 
and  that,  though  we  were  to  march  with  the 
prisoners  to  the  station,  we  were  to  go  in  line 
with  the  guards;  and  if  any  prisoner  sought 
to  escape  it  was  hoped  that  we  would  aid  in 
recapturing  the  runaway.  So  we  promised 
him,  each  on  his  word  of  honor,  that  we  would 
do  this;  and  he  insisted  that  we  should  shake 
hands  with  him  as  a  pledge  and  as  a  token 
of  mutual  confidence,  which  we  accordingly 
did.  Altogether  it  was  quite  an  impressive  little 
ceremonial — and  rather  dramatic,  I  imagine. 
[138] 


GUEST    OF    THE    KAISER 


As  he  left  us,  however,  he  was  heard,  speak- 
ing in  German,  to  say  sotto  voce  to  one  of  the 
guards : 

"If  one  of  those  journalists  tries  to  slip 
away  don't  take  any  chances — shoot  him  at 


once 


It  is  so  easy  to  keep  one's  honor  intact 
when  you  have  moral  support  in  the  shape  of 
an  earnest-minded  German  soldier,  with  a  gun, 
stepping  along  six  feet  behind  you.  My  honor 
was  never  safer. 


[139] 


CHAPTER  VI 
WITH  THE  GERMAN  WRECKING  CREW 


WHEN  we  came  out  of  the  little 
taverne  at  Beaumont,  to  start — as 
we  fondly  supposed — for  Brussels, 
it  was  pitch  dark  in  the  square  of 
the  forlorji  little  town.  With  us  the  polite 
and  pleasant  fiction  that  we  were  guests  of 
the  German  authorities  had  already  worn 
seedy,  not  to  say  threadbare,  but  Lieutenant 
Mittendorfer  persisted  in  keeping  the  little 
romance  alive.  For,  as  you  remember,  we  had 
been  requested — requested,  mind  you,  and  not 
ordered — to  march  to  the  station  with  the 
armed  escort  that  would  be  in  charge  of  the 
prisoners  of  war,  and  it  had  been  impressed 
upon  us  that  we  were  to  assist  in  guarding 
the  convoy,  although  no  one  of  us  had  any 
more  deadly  weapon  in  his  possession  than  a 
fountain  pen;  and  finally,  according  to  our  in- 
structions, if  any  prisoner  attempted  to  escape 
in  the  dark  we  were  to  lay  detaining  hands 
upon  him  and  hold  him  fast. 
[140] 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

This  was  all  very  flattering  and  very  in- 
dicative of  the  esteem  in  which  the  military 
authorities  of  Beaumont  seemed  to  hold  us. 
But  we  were  not  puffed  up  with  a  sense  of 
our  new  responsibilities.  Also  we  were  as  a 
unit  in  agreeing  that  under  no  provocation 
would  we  yield  to  temptations  to  embark  on 
any  side-excursions  upon  the  way  to  the  rail- 
road. Personally  I  know  that  I  was  particular- 
ly firm  upon  this  point.  I  would  defy  that 
column  to  move  so  fast  that  I  could  not  keep 
up  with  it. 

In  the  black  gloom  we  could  make  out  a 
longish  clump  of  men  who  stood  four  abreast, 
scuffling  their  feet  upon  the  miry  wet  stones 
of  the  square.  These  were  the  prisoners — 
one  hundred  and  fifty  Frenchmen  and  Turcos, 
eighty  Englishmen  and  eight  Belgians.  From 
them,  as  we  drew  near,  an  odor  of  v/et,  un- 
washed animals  arose.  It  was  as  rank  and  raw 
as  fumes  from  crude  ammonia.  Then,  in  the 
town  house  of  the  Prince  de  Caraman-Chimay 
just  alongside,  the  double  doors  opened,  and 
the  light  streaming  out  fell  upon  the  naked 
bayonets  over  the  shoulders  of  the  sentries  and 
made  them  look  like  slanting  lines  of  rain. 

There  were  eight  of  us  by  now  in  the  party 
of  guests,  our  original  group  of  five  having 
been  swollen  by  the  addition  of  three  others — 
the  Frenchman  Gerbeaux,  the  American  artist 
Stevens  and  the  Belgian  court-photographer 
Hennebert,  who  had  been  under  arrest  for 
[1411 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


five  days.  We  eight,  obeying  instructions — 
no,  requests — found  places  for  ourselves  in  the 
double  files  of  guards,  four  going  one  side  of 
the  column  and  four  the  other.  I  slipped 
into  a  gap  on  the  left  flank,  alongside  four  of 
the  English  soldiers.  The  guard  immediately 
behind  me  was  a  man  I  knew.  He  had  been 
on  duty  the  afternoon  previous  in  the  place 
where  we  were  being  kept,  and  he  had  been 
obliging  enough  to  let  me  exercise  my  few 
words  of  German  upon  him.  He  grinned  now 
in  recognition  and  humorously  patted  the 
stock  of  his  rifle — this  last,  I  take  it,  being  his 
effort  to  convey  to  my  understanding  that  he 
was  under  orders  to  shoot  me  in  the  event  of 
my  seeking  to  play  truant  during  the  next 
hour  or  so.  He  didn't  know  me — wild  horses 
could  not  have  dragged  us  apart. 

A  considerable  v%^ait  ensued.  Officers,  com- 
ing back  from  the  day's  battle  lines  in  auto- 
mobiles, jumped  out  of  their  cars  and  pressed 
up,  bedraggled  and  wet  through  from  the  rain 
which  had  been  falling,  to  have  a  look  at  the 
prisoners.  Common  soldiers  appeared  also. 
Of  these  latter  many,  I  judged,  had  newly 
arrived  at  the  front  and  had  never  seen  any 
captured  enemies  before.  They  were  particu- 
larly interested  in  the  Englishmen,  who  as 
nearly  as  I  could  tell  endured  the  scrutinizing 
pretty  well,  whereas  the  Frenchmen  grew  un- 
easy and  self-conscious  under  it.  We  who 
were  in  civilian  dress — and  pretty  shabby 
[142] 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

civilian  dress  at  that — came  in  for  our  share 
of  examination  too.  The  sentries  were  kept 
busy  explaining  to  newcomers  that  we  were 
not  spies  going  north  for  trial.  There  was 
little  or  no  jeering  at  the  prisoners. 

Lieutenant  Mittendorfer  appeared  to  feel 
the  burden  of  his  authority  mightily.  His 
importance  expressed  itself  in  many  bellow- 
ing commands  to  his  men.  As  he  passed  the 
door  of  headquarters,  booming  like  a  Prussian 
night-bittern,  one  of  the  officers  there  checked 
him  with  a  gesture. 

*'Why  all  the  noise,  Herr  Lieutenant?"  he 
said  pleasantly  in  German.  "Cannot  this 
thing  be  done  more  quietly  .f^" 

The  young  man  took  the  hint,  and  when  he 
climbed  upon  a  bench  outside  the  wine-shop 
door  his  voice  was  much  milder  as  he  admon- 
ished the  prisoners  that  they  would  be  treated 
with  due  honors  of  war  if  they  obeyed  their 
warders  promptly  during  the  coming  journey, 
but  that  the  least  sign  of  rebellion  among  them 
would  mean  but  one  thing — immediate  death. 
Since  he  spoke  in  German,  a  young  French 
lieutenant  translated  the  warning  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Frenchmen  and  the  Belgians, 
and  a  British  noncom.  did  the  same  for  his 
fellow  countrymen,  speaking  with  a  strong 
Scottish  burr.  He  wound  up  with  an  im- 
provisation of  his  own,  which  I  thought  was 
typically  British.  "Now,  then,  boys,"  he 
sang  out,  "buck  up,  all  of  you!  It  might  be 
[143] 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


worse,  you  know,  and  some  of  these  German 
chaps  don't  seem  such  a  rotten  lot." 

So,  with  that.  Lieutenant  Mittendorfer  blew 
out  his  big  chest  and  barked  an  order  into  the 
night,  and  away  we  all  swung  off  at  a  double 
quick,  with  our  feet  slipping  and  sliding  upon 
the  travel- worn  granite  boulders  underfoot. 
In  addition  to  being  rounded  and  unevenly 
laid,  the  stones  were  now  coated  with  a  layer 
of  slimy  mud.  It  v/as  a  hard  job  to  stay  up- 
right on  them. 

I  don't  think  I  shall  ever  forget  that  march. 
I  know  I  shall  never  forget  that  smell,  or  the 
sound  of  all  our  feet  clumping  over  those 
slick  cobbles.  Nor  shall  I  forget,  either,  the 
appealing  calls  of  Gerbeaux'  black  chauffeur, 
who  was  being  left  behind  in  the  now  empty 
guardhouse,  and  who,  to  judge  from  his  tones, 
did  not  expect  ever  to  see  any  of  us  again. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  ran  across  him  two  weeks 
later  in  Liege.  He  had  just  been  released  and 
was  trying  to  make  his  way  back  to  Brussels. 

The  way  ahead  of  us  was  inky  black.  The 
outlines  of  the  tall  Belgian  houses  on  either 
side  of  the  narrow  street  were  barely  visible, 
for  there  were  no  lights  in  the  windows  at  all 
and  only  dim  candles  or  oil  lamps  in  the 
lower  floors.  No  natives  shov/ed  themselves. 
I  do  not  recollect  that  in  all  that  mile-long 
tramp  I  saw  a  single  Belgian  civilian — only 
soldiers,  shoving  forward  curiously  as  we  passed 
and  pressing  the  files  closer  in  together. 
[144] 


THE  GERMAN  WRECKING  CREW 

Through  one  street  we  went  and  into  another 
which  if  anything  was  even  narrower  and 
blacker  than  the  first,  and  presently  we  could 
tell  by  the  feel  of  things  under  our  feet  that 
we  had  quit  the  paved  road  and  were  traversing 
soft  earth.  We  entered  railway  sidings,  stum- 
bling over  the  tracks,  and  at  the  far  end  of  the 
yard  emerged  into  a  sudden  glare  of  brightness 
and  drew  up  alongside  a  string  of  cars. 

After  the  darkness  the  flaring  brilliancy 
made  us  blink  and  then  it  made  us  wonder 
there  should  be  any  lights  at  all,  seeing  that 
the  French  troops,  in  retiring  from  Beaumont 
four  days  before,  had  done  their  hurried  best 
to  cripple  the  transportation  facilities  and  had 
certainly  put  the  local  gas  plant  out  of  com- 
mission. Yet  here  was  illumination  in  plenty 
and  to  spare.  At  once  the  phenomenon  stood 
explained.  Two  days  after  securing  this  end 
of  the  line  the  German  engineers  had  repaired 
the  torn-up  right-of-way  and  installed  a  com- 
plete acetylene  outfit,  and  already  they  were 
dispatching  trains  of  troops  and  munitions 
clear  across  southeastern  Belgium  to  and  from 
the  German  frontier.  When  we  heard  this  we 
quit  marveling.  We  had  by  now  ceased  to 
wonder  at  the  lightning  rapidity  and  un- 
human  efficiency  of  the  German  military  system 
in  the  field. 

XJnder  t,he  sizzling  acetylene  torches  we  had 
')ur  first  good  look  at  these  prospective  fellow- 
vravelers  of  ours  who  were  avowedly  prisoners, 
[145] 


PATHS   OF    GLORY 


Considered  in  the  aggregate  they  were  not  an 
inspiring  spectacle.  A  soldier,  stripped  of  his 
arms  and  held  by  his  foes,  becomes  of  a  sudden 
a  pitiable,  almost  a  contemptible  object.  You 
think  instinctively  of  an  adder  that  has  lost 
its  fangs,  or  of  a  wild  cat  that,  being  shorn  of 
teeth  to  bite  with  and  claws  to  tear  with,  is 
now  a  more  helpless,  more  impotent  thing 
than  if  it  had  been  created  without  teeth  and 
claws  in  the  first  place.  These  similes  are  poor 
ones,  I'm  afraid,  but  I  find  it  difficult  to  put 
my  thoughts  exactly  into  words. 
)  These  particular  soldiers  were  most  forlorn- 
looking,  all  except  the  half  dozen  Turcos 
among  the  Frenchmen.  They  spraddled  their 
baggy  white  legs  and  grinned  comfortably, 
baring  fine  double  rows  of  ivory  in  their 
brown  faces.  The  others  mainly  were  droopy 
figures  of  misery  and  shame.  By  reason  of 
their  hair,  which  they  wore  long  and  which 
now  hung  down  in  their  eyes,  and  by  reason 
also  of  their  voluminous  loose  red  trousers  and 
their  long-tailed  awkward  blue  coats,  the 
Frenchmen  showed  themselves  especially  untidy 
and  unhappy-looking.  Almost  to  a  man  they 
were  dark,  lean,  sinewy  fellows;  they  were 
from  the  south  of  France,  we  judged.  Cer- 
tainly with  a  week's  growth  of  black  whiskers 
upon  their  jaws  they  were  fit  now  to  play 
stage  brigands  without  further  make-up. 

"Wot  a  bloomin',  stinkin',  rotten  country!" 
came,  two  rows  back  from  where  I  stood,  a 
[1461 


THE  GERMAN  WRECKING  CREW 

Cockney  voice  uplifted  to  the  leaky  skies. 
"There  ain't  nothin'  to  eat  in  it,  and  there 
ain't  nothin'  to  drink  in  it,  too." 

A  little  sandy  man  alongside  of  me,  whose 
chin  was  on  his  breast  bone,  spake  downward 
along  his  gray  flannel  shirt  bosom: 

"Just  wyte,"  he  said;  "just  wyte  till  Eng- 
land 'ears  wot  they  done  to  us,  'erdin'  us 
about  like  cattle.  Blighters!"  He  spat  his 
disgust  upon  the  ground. 

We  spoke  to  none  of  them  directly,  nor  they 
to  us — that  also  being  a  condition  imposed  by 
Mittendorfer. 

The  train  was  composed  of  several  small 
box  cars  and  one  second-class  passenger  coach 
of  German  manufacture  with  a  dumpy  little 
locomotive  at  either  end,  one  to  pull  and  one 
to  push.  In  profile  it  would  have  reminded 
you  somewhat  of  the  wrecking  trains  that  go 
to  disasters  in  America.  The  prisoners  were 
loaded  aboard  the  box  cars  like  so  many 
sheep,  with  alert  gray  shepherds  behind  them, 
carrying  guns  in  lieu  of  crooks;  and,  being 
entrained,  they  were  bedded  down  for  the  night 
upon  straw. 

The  civilians  composing  our  party  were 
bidden  to  climb  aboard  the  passenger  coach, 
where  the  eight  of  us,  two  of  the  number 
being  of  augmented  superadult  size,  took  pos- 
session of  a  compartment  meant  to  hold  six. 
The  other  compartments  were  occupied  by 
wounded  Germans,  except  one  compartment, 
[1471 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


which  was  set  aside  for  the  captive  French 
lieutenant  and  two  British  subalterns.  Top- 
Sergeant  Rosenthal  was  in  charge  of  the  train 
with  headquarters  aboard  our  coach.  With 
him,  as  aides,  he  had  three  Red  Cross  men. 

The  lighting  apparatus  of  the  car  did  not 
operate.  On  the  ledge  of  our  window  sat 
a  small  oil  lamp,  sending  out  a  rich  smell 
and  a  pale,  puny  illumination.  Just  before 
we  pulled  out  Rosenthal  came  and  blew  out 
the  lamp,  leaving  the  wick  to  smoke  abom- 
inably. He  explained  that  he  did  this  for 
our  own  well-being.  Belgian  snipers  just  out- 
side the  town  had  been  firing  into  the  passing 
trains,  he  said,  and  a  light  in  a  car  window 
was  but  an  added  temptation.  He  advised 
us  that  if  shooting  started  we  should  drop  upon 
the  floor.  We  assured  him  in  chorus  that  we 
would,  and  then  after  adding  that  we  must 
not  be  surprised  if  the  Belgians  derailed  the 
train  during  the  night  he  went  away,  leaving 
us  packed  snugly  in  together  in  the  dark. 
This  incident  had  a  tendency  to  discourage  light 
conversation  among  us  for  some  minutes. 

Possibly  it  was  because  daylight  travel  would 
be  safer  travel,  or  it  may  have  been  for  some 
other  good  and  suflScient  reason,  that  after 
traveling  some  six  or  eight  miles  joltingly  we 
stopped  in  the  edge  of  a  small  village  and  stayed 
there  until  after  sun-up.  That  was  a  hard 
night  for  sleeping  purposes.  One  of  our  party, 
who  was  a  small  man,  climbed  up  into  the 
[1481 


THE  GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

baggage  net  above  one  row  of  seats  and 
stretched  himself  stiffly  in  the  narrow  ham- 
mocklike arrangement,  fearing  to  move  lest 
he  tumble  down  on  the  heads  of  his  fellow- 
sufferers.  Another  laid  him  down  in  the  little 
aisle  flanking  the  compartment,  where  at  least 
he  might  spraddle  his  limbs  and  where  also, 
persons  passing  the  length  of  the  car  stepped 
upon  his  face  and  figure  from  time  to  time. 
This  interfered  with  his  rest.  The  remaining 
six  of  us  mortised  ourselves  into  the  seats  in 
neck-cricking  attitudes,  with  our  legs  so  inter- 
twined and  mingled  that  when  one  man  got 
up  to  stretch  himself  he  had  to  use  great  care 
in  picking  out  his  own  legs.  Sometimes  he 
could  only  tell  that  it  was  his  leg  by  pinching 
it.  This  was  especially  so  after  inaction  had 
put  his  extremities  to  sleep  while  the  rest  of 
him  remained  wide  awake. 

After  dawn  we  ran  slowly  to  Charleroi,  the 
center  of  the  Belgian  iron  industry,  in  a  sterile 
land  of  mines  and  smelters  and  slag-heaps,  and 
bleak,  bare,  ore-stained  hillsides.  The  Ger- 
mans had  fought  here,  first  with  organized 
troops  of  the  Allies,  and  later,  by  their  own 
telling,  w^th  bushwhacking  civilians.  Whole 
rows  of  houses  upon  either  side  of  the  track 
had  been  ventilated  by  shells  or  burned  out 
with  fire,  and  their  gable  ends,  lacking  roofs, 
now  stood  up  nakedly,  fretting  the  skyline 
like  gigantic  saw  teeth.  As  we  were  drawing 
out  from  between  these  twin  rows  of  ruins 
[149] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


we  sav/  a  German  sergeant  in  a  flower  plot 
alongside  a  wrecked  cottage  bending  over, 
apparently  smelling  at  a  clump  of  tall  red 
geraniums.  That  he  could  find  time  in  the 
midst  of  that  hideous  desolation  to  sniff  at 
the  posies  struck  us  as  a  typically  German  bit 
of  sentimentalism.  Just  then,  though,  he 
stood  erect  and  we  were  better  informed.  He 
had  been  talking  over  a  military  telephone,  the 
wires  of  which  were  buried  underground  with 
a  concealed  transmitter  snuggling  beneath  the 
geraniums.  The  flowers  even  were  being  made 
to  contribute  their  help  in  forwarding  the 
mechanism  of  war.  I  think,  though,  that  it 
took  a  composite  German  mind  to  evolve  that 
expedient.  A  Prussian  would  bring  along  the 
telephone;  a  Saxon  would  bed  it  among  the 
blossoms. 

We  progressed  onward  by  a  process  of 
alternate  stops  and  starts,  through  a  land 
bearing  remarkably  few  traces  to  show  for 
its  recent  chastening  with  sword  and  torch, 
until  in  the  middle  of  the  blazing  hot  fore- 
noon we  came  to  Gembloux,  which  I  think 
must  be  the  place  where  all  the  flies  in  Bel- 
gium are  spawned.  Here  on  a  siding  we  lay 
all  day,  grilled  in  the  heat  and  pestered  by 
swarms  of  the  buzzing  scavenger  vermin,  while 
troop  trains  without  number  passed  us,  hurry- 
ing along  the  sentry-guarded  railway  to  the 
lower  frontiers  of  Belgium.  Every  box-car 
door  made  a  frame  for  a  group-picture  of 
[1501 


THE  GERMAN  WRECKING  CREW 

broad  German  faces  and  bulky  German  bodies. 
Upon  nearly  every  car  the  sportive  passengers 
had  lashed  limbs  of  trees  and  big  clumps  of 
field  flowers.  Also  with  colored  chalks  they 
had  extensively  frescoed  the  wooden  walls  as 
high  up  as  they  could  reach.  The  commonest 
legend  was  "On  to  Paris,"  or  for  variety  "To 
Paris  Direct,"  but  occasionally  a  lighter  touch 
showed  itself.  For  example,  one  wag  had  in- 
scribed on  a  car  door:  "Declarations  of  War 
Received  Here,"  and  another  had  drawn  a 
highly  impressionistic  likeness  of  his  Kaiser, 
and  under  it  had  inscribed  "Wilhelm  II, 
Emperor  of  Europe." 

Presently  as  train  after  train,  loaded  some- 
times with  guns  or  supplies  but  usually  with 
men,  clanked  by,  it  began  to  dawn  upon  us 
that  these  soldiers  were  of  a  different  physical 
type  from  the  soldiers  we  had  seen  heretofore. 
They  were  all  Germans,  to  be  sure,  but  the 
men  along  the  front  were  younger  men,  hard- 
bitten and  trained  down,  with  the  face  which 
we  had  begun  to  call  the  Teutonic  fighting 
face,  whereas  these  men  were  older,  and  of  a 
heavier  port  and  fuller  fashion  of  countenance. 
Also  some  of  them  wore  blue  coats,  red- 
trimmed,  instead  of  the  dull  gray  service 
garb  of  the  troops  in  the  first  invading  columns. 
Indeed  some  of  them  even  wore  a  nondescript 
mixture  of  uniform  and  civilian  garb.  They 
were  Laiidwehr  and  Landsturm,  troops  of  the 
third  and  fourth  lines,  going  now  to  police 
[151] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


the  roads  and  garrison  the  captured  towns, 
and  hold  the  Hnes  of  communication  open 
while  the  first  line,  who  were  picked  troops, 
and  the  second  line,  who  were  reservists, 
pressed  ahead  into  France. 

They  showed  a  childlike  curiosity  to  see 
the  prisoners  in  the  box  cars  behind  us.  They 
grinned  triumphantly  at  the  Frenchmen  and 
the  Britishers,  but  the  sight  of  a  Turco  in  his 
short  jacket  and  his  dirty  white  skirts  in- 
variably set  them  off  in  derisive  cat-calling 
and  whooping.  One  beefy  cavalryman  in  his 
forties,  who  looked  the  Bavarian  peasant  all 
over,  boarded  our  car  to  see  what  might  be 
seen.  He  had  been  drinking.  He  came 
nearer  being  drunk  outright  than  any  German 
soldier  I  had  seen  to  date.  Because  he  heard 
us  talking  English  he  insisted  on  regarding  us 
as  English  spies. 

"Hark!  they  betray  themselves,"  we  heard 
him  mutter  thickly  to  one  of  his  wounded 
countrymen  in  the  next  compartment.  "They 
are  damned  Englishers." 

"Nein!  Nein!  All  Americans,'*  we  heard 
the  other  say. 

"Well,  if  they  are  Americans,  why  don't 
they  talk  the  American  language  then.''"  he 
demanded.  Hearing  this,  I  was  sorry  I  had 
neglected  in  my  youth  to  learn  Choctaw. 

Still  dubious  of  us,  he  came  now  and  stood 
in  the  aisle,  rocking  slightly  on  his  bolster 
legs  and  eying  us  glassily.  Eventually  a 
[1521 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

thought  pierced  the  fog  of  his  understanding. 
He  hauled  his  saber  out  of  its  scabbard  and 
invited  us  to  run  our  fingers  along  the  edge 
and  see  how  keen  and  sharp  it  was.  He  added, 
with  appropriate  gestures,  that  he  had 
honed  it  with  the  particular  intent  of  slic- 
ing off  a  few  English  heads.  For  one,  and 
speaking  for  one  only,  I  may  say  I  was,  on 
the  whole,  rather  glad  when  he  departed  from 
among  us. 

When  we  grew  tired  of  watching  the  troop 
trains  streaming  south  we  fought  the  flies,  and 
listened  for  perhaps  the  tenth  time  to  the 
story  of  Stevens'  experience  vs^hen  he  first  fell 
into  German  hands,  six  days  before. 

Stevens  was  the  young  American  who  ac- 
companied Gerbeaux,  the  Frenchman,  and  Hen- 
nebert,  the  Belgian,  on  their  ill-timed  expedition 
from  Brussels  in  an  automobile  bearing  with- 
out authority  a  Red  Cross  flag.  Gerbeaux 
was  out  to  get  a  story  for  the  Chicago  paper 
which  he  served  as  Brussels  correspondent, 
and  the  Belgian  hoped  to  take  some  photo- 
graphs; but  a  pure  love  of  excitement  brought 
Stevens  along.  He  had  his  passport  to  prove 
ihis  citizenship  and  a  pass  from  General  von 
Jarotzky,  military  commandant  of  Brussels, 
authorizing  him  to  pass  through  the  lines. 
He  thought  he  was  perfectly  safe. 

When  their  machine  was  halted  by  the 
Germans  a  short  distance  south  and  west  of 
Waterloo,  Stevens,  for  some  reason  which  he 
[1531 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


could  never  understand,  was  separated  from 
liis  two  companions  and  the  South-African 
negro  chauffeur.  A  sergeant  took  him  in 
charge,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  day  he  rode 
on  the  tail  of  a  baggage  wagon  with  a  guard 
upon  either  side  of  him.  First,  though,  he 
was  searched  and  all  his  papers  were  taken 
from  him. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  the  pack-train  halted 
and  as  Stevens  was  stretching  his  legs  in  a 
field  a  first  lieutenant,  whom  he  described  as 
being  tall  and  nervous  and  highly  excitable, 
ran  up  and,  after  berating  the  two  guards  for 
not  having  their  rifles  ready  to  fire,  he  poked 
a  gun  under  Stevens'  nose  and  went  through 
the  process  of  loading  it,  meanwhile  telling 
him  that  if  he  moved  an  inch  his  brains  would 
be  blown  out.  A  sergeant  gently  edged  Stevens 
back  out  of  the  danger  belt,  and,  from  behind 
the  officer's  back  another  man,  so  Stevens 
said,  tapped  himself  gently  upon  the  forehead 
to  indicate  that  the  Herr  Lieutenant  was 
cracked  in  the  brain. 

After  this  Stevens  was  taken  into  an  im- 
provised barracks  in  a  deserted  Belgian  gen- 
darmerie and  locked  in  a  room.  At  nine 
o'clock  the  lieutenant  came  to  him  and  told 
him  in  a  mixture  of  French  and  German 
that  he  had  by  a  court-martial  been  found 
guilty  of  being  an  English  spy  and  that  at 
six  o'clock  the  following  morning  he  would 
be  shot.  "When  you  hear  a  bugle  sound  you 
[154] 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

may  know  that  is  the  signal  for  your  execu- 
tion," the  officer  added. 

While  poor  Stevens  was  still  begging  for 
an  opportunity  to  be  heard  in  his  own  de- 
fense the  lieutenant  dealt  him  a  blow  in  the 
side  which  left  him  temporarily  breathless. 
In  a  moment  two  soldiers  had  crossed  his 
wrists  behind  his  back  and  were  lashing  them 
tightly  together  with  a  rope. 

Thus  bound  he  was  taken  back  indoors 
and  made  to  sit  on  a  bench.  Eight  soldiers 
stretched  themselves  upon  the  floor  of  the 
room  and  slept  there;  a  sergeant  slept  with 
his  body  across  the  door.  A  guard  sat  on  the 
bench  beside  Stevens. 

"He  gave  me  two  big  slugs  of  brandy  to 
drink,"  said  Stevens,  continuing  his  tale,"  and 
it  affected  me  no  more  than  so  much  water. 
After  a  couple  of  hours  I  managed  to  work 
the  cords  loose  and  I  got  one  hand  free.  Mov- 
ing cautiously  I  lifted  my  feet,  and  by  stretch- 
ing my  arms  cautiously  down,  still  holding 
them  behind  nw  back,  I  untied  one  shoe. 
I  meant  at  the  last  to  kick  off  my  shoes  and 
run  for  it.  I  was  feeling  for  the  laces  on  my 
other  shoe  when  another  guard  came  to  re- 
enforce  the  first,  and  he  watched  me  so  closely 
that  I  knew  that  chance  was  gone. 

"After  a  while,  strange  as  it  seems,  all  the 

fear  and  all  the  horror  of  death  left  me.     My 

chief  regret  now  was,  not  that  I  had  to  die, 

but    that    my    people    at   home   would   never 

[155] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


know  how  I  died  or  where.  I  put  my  head 
down  on  the  table  and  actually  dozed  off. 
But  there  was  a  clock  in  the  room  and  when- 
ever it  struck  I  would  rouse  up  and  say  to 
myself,  almost  impersonally,  that  I  now  had 
four  hours  to  live,  or  three,  or  two,  as  the 
case  might  be.  Then  I  would  go  to  sleep 
again.  Once  or  twice  a  queer  sinking  sensa- 
tion in  my  stomach,  such  as  I  never  felt  be- 
fore, would  come  to  me,  but  toward  daylight 
this  ceased  to  occur. 

"At  half -past  five  two  soldiers,  one  carrying 
a  spade  and  the  other  a  lantern,  came  in. 
They  lit  the  lantern  at  a  lamp  that  burned 
on  a  table  in  front  of  me  and  went  out.  Pres- 
ently I  could  hear  them  digging  in  the  yard 
outside  the  door.  I  believed  it  was  my  grave 
they  were  digging.  I  cannot  recall  that  this 
made  any  particular  impression  upon  me.  I 
considered  it  in  a  most  casual  sort  of  fashion. 
I  remember  wondering  whether  it  was  a  deep 
grave. 

"At  five  minutes  before  six  a  bugle  sounded. 
The  eight  men  on  the  floor  got  up,  buckled 
on  their  cartridge  belts,  shouldered  their  rifles 
and,  leaving  their  knapsacks  behind,  tramped 
out.  I  followed  with  my  guards  upon  either 
side  of  me.  My  one  fear  now  was  that  I 
should  tremble  at  the  end.  I  felt  no  fear,  but 
I  was  afraid  my  knees  would  shake.  I  remem- 
ber how  relieved  I  was  when  I  took  the  first 
step  to  find  my  legs  did  not  tremble  under  me. 
[156] 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

I  was  resolved,  too,  that  I  would  not  be  shot 
down  with  my  hands  tied  behind  me.  When 
I  faced  the  squad  I  meant  to  shake  off  the 
ropes  on  my  wrists  and  take  the  volley  with 
my  arms  at  my  sides." 

Stevens  was  marched  to  the  center  of  the 
courtyard.  Then,  without  a  word  of  explana- 
tion to  him  his  bonds  were  removed  and  he 
was  put  in  an  automobile  and  carried  off  to 
rejoin  the  other  members  of  the  unlucky  sight- 
seeing party.  He  never  did  find  out  whether 
he  had  been  made  the  butt  of  a  hideous  prac- 
tical joke  by  a  half -mad  brute  or  whetlier 
his  tormentor  really  meant  to  send  him  to 
death  and  was  deterred  at  the  last  moment 
by  fear  of  the  consequences.  One  thing  he 
did  learn — there  had  been  no  court-martial. 
Thereafter,  during  his  captivity,  Stevens  was 
treated  with  a  show  of  kindness  by  all  the 
officers  with  whom  he  came  in  contact.  His 
was  the  only  instance  that  I  had  knowledge 
of  w^iere  a  prisoner  has  been  tortured,  physi- 
cally or  mentally,  by  Germans.  It  was  curious 
that  in  this  one  case  the  victim  should  have 
been  an  American  citizen  whose  intentions 
>,  were  perfectly  innocent  and  whose  papers  were 
orthodox  and  unquestionable. 

Glancing  back  over  what  I  have  here  writ- 
ten down  I  find  I  have  failed  altogether  to 
mention  the  food  which  we  ate  on  that  trip 
of  ours  with  the  German  wrecking  crew.  It 
was  hardly  worth  mentioning,  it  was  so  scanty. 
[157] 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


We  had  to  eat,  during  that  day  while  we  lay 
at  Gembloux,  a  loaf  of  the  sourish  soldiers' 
black  bread,  with  green  mold  upon  the  crust, 
and  a  pot  of  rancid  honey  which  one  of  the 
party  had  bethought  him  to  bring  from  Beau- 
mont in  his  pocket.  To  wash  this  mixture  down 
we  had  a  few  swigs  of  miserably  bad  lukewarm 
ration-coffee  from  a  private's  canteen,  a  bottle 
of  confiscated  Belgian  mineral  water,  which  a 
private  at  Charleroi  gave  us  from  his  store,  and 
a  precious  quart  of  the  Prince  de  Caraman- 
Chimay's  commandeered  wine — also  a  souvenir 
of  our  captivity.  Late  in  the  afternoon  a 
sergeant  sold  us  for  a  five-mark  piece  a  big 
skin-casing  filled  with  half-raw  pork  sausage. 
I've  never  tasted  anything  better. 

Even  so,  we  fared  better  than  the  prisoners 
in  the  box  cars  behind  and  the  dozen  wounded 
men  in  the  coach  with  us.  They  had  only 
coffee  and  dry  bread  and,  at  the  latter  end  of 
the  long  day,  a  few  chunks  of  the  sausage. 
Some  of  the  wounded  men  vv'ere  pretty  badly 
hurt,  too.  There  was  one  whose  left  forearm 
had  been  half  shot  away.  His  stiff  fingers 
protruded  beyond  his  soiled  bandages  and  they 
were  still  crusted  with  dried  blood  and  grained 
with  dirt.  Another  had  been  pierced  through 
the  jaw  with  a  bullet.  That  part  of  his  face 
which  showed  through  the  swathings  about 
his  head  was  terribly  swollen  and  purple  with 
congested  blood.  The  others  had  flesh  wounds, 
mainly  in  their  sides  or  their  legs.  Some  of 
[158] 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

them  were  feverish;  all  of  them  sorely  needed 
clean  garments  for  their  bodies  and  fresh  dress- 
ings for  their  hurts  and   proper  food  for  their 
stomachs.     Yet  I  did  not  hear  one  of  them 
complain  or  groan.     With  that  oxlike  patience 
of  the  North-European  peasant  breed,  which 
seems  accentuated  in  these  Germans  in  time 
of  war,  they  quietly  endured  what  was  acute 
discomfort  for  any  sound  man  to  have  to  en- 
dure.   In  some  dim,  dumb  fashion  of  their  own 
they  seemed,  each  one  of  them,  to  comprehend 
that  in  the  vast  organism  of  an  army  at  war 
the  individual  unit  does  not  count.     To  him- 
self he  may  be  of  prime  importance  and  first 
consideration,  but  in  the  general  carrying  out 
of  the  scheme  he  is  a  mote,  a  molecule,  a  spore, 
a  protoplasm — an  infinitesimal,  utterly  incon- 
sequential    thing     to     be     sacrificed     without 
thought.    Thus  we  diagnosed  their  mental  poses. 
Along  toward  five  o'clock  a  goodish  string 
of  cars  was  added  to  our  train,  and  into  these 
additional  cars  seven  hundred  French  soldiers, 
who   had   been   collected   at   Gembloux,    were 
loaded.    With  the  Frenchmen  as  they  marched 
under    our    window    went,    perhaps,    twenty 
civilian    prisoners,    including    two    priests  and 
three  or  four  subdued  little  men  who  looked 
as  though  they  might  be  civic  dignitaries  of 
some  small  Belgian  town.     In  the  squad  was 
one  big,  broad-shouldered  peasant  in  a  blouse, 
whose   arms   were  roped  back  at  the  elbows 
with  a  thick  cord. 

[159] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


*'Do  you  see  that  man?"  said  one  of  our 
guards  excitedly,  and  he  pointed  at  the  pin- 
ioned man.  "He  is  a  gi'ave  robber.  He  has 
been  digging  up  dead  Germans  to  rob  the 
bodies.  They  tell  me  that  when  they  caught 
him  he  had  in  his  pockets  ten  dead  men's 
fingers  which  he  had  cut  off  with  a  knife  be- 
cause the  flesh  was  so  swollen  he  could  not 
slip  the  rings  off.    He  will  be  shot,  that  fellow." 

We  looked  with  a  deeper  interest  then  at 
the  man  whose  arms  were  bound,  but  privately 
we  permitted  ourselves  to  be  skeptical  regard- 
ing the  details  of  his  alleged  ghoulishness.  We 
had  begun  to  discount  German  stories  of 
Belgian  atrocities  and  Belgian  stories  of  German 
atrocities.  I  might  add  that  I  am  still  dis- 
counting the  former  variety. 

To  help  along  our  train  two  more  little  en- 
gines were  added,  but  even  with  four  of  them 
to  draw  and  to  shove  their  load  was  now  so 
heavy  that  we  were  jerked  along  with  sensa- 
tions as  though  we  were  havmg  a  jaw  tooth 
pulled  every  few  seconds.  After  such  a  fashion 
we  progressed  very  slowly.  Already  we  knew 
that  we  were  not  going  to  Brussels,  as  we  had 
been  promised  in  Beaumont  that  we  should  go. 
We  only  hoped  we  were  not  bound  for  a  Ger- 
man military  fortress  in  some  interior  city. 

It  fell  to  my  lot  that  second  night  to  sleep 

in  the  aisle.     In  spite  of  being  walked  on  at 

intervals  I  slept  pretty  well.    \Mien  I  waked  it 

was  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  just,  and  we 

[1601 


THE   GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

were  standing  in  the  train  shed  at  Liege,  and 
hospital  corps  men  were  coming  aboard  with 
hot  coffee  and  more  raw  sausages  for  the 
wounded.  Among  the  Germans,  sausages  are 
used  medicinally.  I  think  they  must  keep 
supplies  of  sausages  in  their  homes,  for  use  in 
cases  of  accident  and  sickness. 

I  got  up  and  looked  from  the  window. 
The  station  was  full  of  soldiers  moving  about 
on  various  errands.  Overhead  big  arc  lights 
sputtered  spitefully,  so  that  the  place  was 
almost  as  bright  as  day.  Almost  directly 
below  me  was  a  big  table,  which  stood  on  the 
platform  and  was  covered  over  with  papers 
and  maps.  At  the  table  sat  two  officers — high 
officers,  I  judged — writing  busily.  Their  stiff 
white  cuff-ends  showed  below  their  coat- 
sleeves;  their  slim  black  boots  were  highly 
polished,  and  altogether  they  had  the  look  of 
having  just  escaped  from  the  hands  of  a  valet. 
Between  them  and  the  frowsy  privates  was  a 
gulf  a  thousand  miles  wide  and  a  thousand 
miles  deep. 

When  I  woke  again  it  was  broad  daylight 
and  we  had  crossed  the  border  and  were  in 
Germany.  At  small  way  stations  women  and 
girls  wearing  long  white  aprons  and  hospital 
badges  came  under  the  car  windows  with  hot 
drinks  and  bacon  sandwiches  for  the  wounded. 
They  gave  us  some,  too,  and,  I  hope,  bestowed 
what  was  left  upon  the  prisoners  at  the  rear. 
We  ran  now  through  a  land  untouched  by  war, 
[1611 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


where  prim  farmhouses  stood  in  prim  gardens. 
It  was  Sunday  morning  and  the  people  were 
going  to  church  dressed  in  their  Sunday  best. 
Considering  that  Germany  was  supposed  to 
have  been  drained  of  its  able-bodied  male 
adults  for  war-making  purposes  we  saw,  among 
the  groups,  an  astonishingly  large  number  of 
men  of  military  age.  By  contrast  with  the 
harried  country  from  which  we  had  just 
emerged  this  seemed  a  small  Paradise  of  peace. 
Over  there  in  Belgium  all  the  conditions  of 
life  had  been  disorganized  and  undone,  where 
they  had  not  been  wrecked  outright.  Over 
here  in  Germany  the  calm  was  entirely  un- 
ruffled. 

It  shamed  us  to  come  as  we  were  into  such 
surroundings.  For  our  car  was  littered  with 
sausage  skins  and  bread  crusts,  and  filth  less 
pleasant  to  look  at  and  stenches  of  many  sorts 
abounded.  Indeed  I  shall  go  further  and  say 
that  it  stank  most  fearsomely.  As  for  us,  we 
felt  ourselves  to  be  infamous  offenses  against 
the  bright,  clean  day.  We  had  not  slept  in  a 
bed  for  five  nights  or  had  our  clothes  off  for 
that  time.  For  three  days  none  of  us  had  eaten 
a  real  meal  at  a  regular  table.  For  two  days 
we  had  not  washed  our  faces  and  hands. 

The  prisoners  of  war  went  on  to  Cologne 
to  be  put  in  a  laager,  but  we  were  bidden  to 
detrain  at  Aix-la-Chapelle.  We  climbed  o£F,  a 
dirty,  wrinkled,  unshaven  troop  of  vagabonds, 
to  find  ourselves  free  to  go  where  we  pleased. 
[1621 


THE  GERMAN    WRECKING    CREW 

That  is,  we  thought  so  at  first.  But  by  evening 
the  Frenchman  and  the  Belgians  had  been 
taken  away  to  be  held  in  prison  until  the  end 
of  the  war,  and  for  two  days  the  highly  efficient 
local  secret-service  staff  kept  the  rest  of  us 
under  its  watchful  care.  After  that,  though, 
the  American  consul,  Robert  J.  Thompson, 
succeeded  in  convincing  the  military  authori- 
ties that  we  were  not  dangerous. 

I  still  think  that  taking  copious  baths  and 
getting  ourselves  shaved  helped  to  clear  us  of 
suspicion. 


[163] 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  GRAPES  OF  WRATH 


1 


"AHERE  is  a  corner  of  Rhenish  Prussia 

that  shoulders  up  against  Holland  and 

drives  a  nudging  elbow  deep  into  the 

ribs  of  Belgium;  and  right  here,  at  the 

place  where  the  three  countries  meet,  stands 

Charlemagne's  ancient  city  of  Aix-la-Chapelle, 

called  Aachen  by  the  Germans. 

To  go  from  the  middle  of  Aix-la-Chapelle  to 
the  Dutch  boundary  takes  twenty  minutes 
on  a  tram-car,  and  to  go  to  the  Belgian  line 
requires  an  even  hour  in  a  horse-drawn  vehicle, 
and  considerably  less  than  that  presuming  you 
go  by  automobile.  So  you  see  the  toes  of  the 
town  touch  two  foreign  frontiers;  and  of  all 
German  cities  it  is  the  most  westerly  and, 
therefore,  closest  of  all  to  the  zone  of  action 
in  the  west  of  Europe. 

You  would  never  guess  it,  however.     When 
we  landed  in  Aix-la-Chapelle,   coming  out  of 
the    heart    of    the    late    August    hostilities    in 
[164] 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


Belgium,  we  marveled;  for,  behold,  here  was 
a  clean,  white  city  that,  so  far  as  the  look  of 
it  and  the  feel  of  it  went,  might  have  been  a 
thousand  miles  from  the  sound  of  gunfire. 
On  that  Sabbath  morning  of  our  arrival  an 
air  of  everlasting  peace  abode  with  it.  That 
same  air  of  peace  continued  to  abide  with  it 
during  all  the  days  we  spent  here.  Yet,  if 
you  took  a  step  to  the  southwest — a  figurative 
step  in  seven-league  boots — you  were  where 
all  hell  broke  loose.  War  is  a  most  tremendous 
emphasizer  of  contrasts. 

These  lines  were  written  late  in  September, 
in  a  hotel  room  at  Aix-la-Chapelle.  The  writ- 
ing of  them  followed  close  on  an  automobile 
trip  to  Liege,  through  a  district  blasted  by  war 
and  corrugated  with  long  trenches  where  those 
who  died  with  their  boots  on  still  lie  with  their 
boots  on. 

Let  me,  if  I  can,  draw  two  pictures — one 
of  this  German  outpost  town,  and  the  other 
of  the  things  that  might  be  seen  four  or  five 
miles  distant  over  the  border. 

I  have  been  told  that,  in  the  first  flurry 
of  the  breaking  out  of  the  World-War,  Aix 
was  not  placid.  It  went  spy-mad,  just  as  all 
Europe  went  spy-mad — a  mania  from  which 
this  Continent  has  not  entirely  recovered  by 
any  means.  There  was  a  great  rounding  up 
of  suspected  aliens.  Every  loyal  citizen  re- 
solved himself  or  herself  into  a  self-appointed 
policeman,  to  watch  the  movements  of  those 
[165] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


suspected  of  being  disloyal.  Also,  they  tell 
me,  when  the  magic  mobilization  began  and 
troops  poured  through  without  ceasing  for 
four  days  and  four  nights,  and  fighting  broke 
out  just  the  other  side  of  the  Belgian  custom- 
house, on  the  main  high  road  to  Liege,  there 
was  excitement.  But  all  that  was  over  long 
before  we  came. 

The  war  has  gone  onward,  down  into  France; 
and  all  the  people  know  is  what  the  official 
bulletins  tell  them;  in  fact,  I  think  they  must 
know  less  about  operations  and  results  than 
our  own  people  in  America.  I  know  not  what 
the  opportunity  of  the  spectator  may  have  been 
with  regard  to  other  wars,  but  certainly  in 
this  war  it  is  true  that  the  nearer  you  get  to 
it  the  less  you  understand  of  its  scope. 

All  about  you,  on  every  side,  is  a  screen  of 
secrecy.  Once  in  a  while  it  parts  for  a  moment, 
and  through  the  rift  you  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
movement  of  armies  and  the  swing  and  sweep 
of  campaigns.  Then  the  curtain  closes  and 
again  you  are  shut  in. 

Let  me  put  the  case  in  another  way:  It  is 

as   though  we  who  are  at  the  front,  or  close 

*  to  it,  stand  before  a  mighty  painting,  but  with 

'our  noses  almost  touching  the  canvas.     You 

who  are  farther  away  see  the  whole  picture. 

We,  for  the  moment,  see  only  so  much  of  it 

as    you    might    cover    with    your    two    hands; 

but  this  advantage  we  do  have — that  we  see 

the  brush  strokes,  the  color  shadings,  the  in- 

[1661 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


finite  small  detail,  whereas  you  view  its  wider 
effects. 

And  then,  having  seen  it,  when  we  try  to 
put  our  story  into  words — when  we  try  to 
set  down  on  paper  the  unspeakable  horror  of 
it — we  realize  what  a  futile,  incomplete  thing 
the  English  language  is. 

This  present  day  in  Aix-la-Chapelle  will  be, 
I  assume,  much  like  all  the  other  days  I  have 
spent  here.  An  hour  ago  small  official  bulletins, 
sanctioned  by  the  Berlin  War  Office,  were  posted 
in  the  windows  of  the  shops  and  on  the  front 
of  the  public  buildings;  and  small  groups  gath- 
ered before  them  to  read  the  news. 

If  it  was  good  news  they  took  it  calmly. 
If  it  was  not  so  good,  still  they  took  it  calmly. 
If  it  was  outright  bad  news  I  think  they 
would  still  take  it  calmly.  For,  come  good  or 
evil,  they  are  all  possessed  now  with  the  belief 
that,  in  the  long  run,  Germany  must  win. 
Their  confidence  is  supreme. 

It  was  characteristic  of  them,  though,  that, 
until  word  came  of  the  first  German  success, 
there  was  no  general  flying  of  flags  in  the 
town.  Now  flags  are  up  every  where— the  colors 
of  the  Empire  and  of  Prussia,  and  often  enough 
just  a  huge  yellow  square  bearing  the  sprad- 
dled, black,  spidery  design  of  the  Imperial  eagle. 
But  there  is  never  any  hysteria;  I  don't  believe 
these  Prussians  know  the  meaning  of  the  word. 

It  is  safe  to  assume  that  out  of  every  three 
grown  men  in  front  of  a  bulletin  one  will  be 
[167] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


a  soldier.  Yet,  considering  that  Germany  is 
supposed,  at  this  moment,  to  have  upward 
of  five  million  men  in  the  field  or  under  arms, 
and  that  approximately  two  millions  more, 
who  were  exempt  from  call  by  reason  of  age 
or  other  disabilities,  are  said  to  have  volun- 
teered, you  would  be  astonished  to  see  how 
many  men  in  civilian  dress  are  on  the  streets. 

Whether  in  uniform  or  not,  though,  these 
men  are  at  work  after  some  fashion  or  other 
for  their  country.  Practically  all  the  physi- 
cians in  Aix  are  serving  in  the  hospitals.  The 
rich  men— the  men  of  affairs — are  acting  as 
military  clerks  at  headquarters  or  driving  Red 
Cross  cars.  The  local  censpr  of  the  telegraph 
is  over  eighty  years  old — a  splendid-looking 
old  white  giant,  who  won  the  Iron  Cross  in 
the  Franco-Prussian  War  and  retired  with  the 
rank  of  general  years  and  years  ago.  Now,  in 
full  uniform,  he  works  twelve  hard  hours  a  day. 

The  head  waiter  at  this  hotel  told  me  yes- 
terday that  he  expected  to  be  summoned  to 
the  colors  in  a  day  or  two.  He  has  had  his 
notice  and  is  ready  to  go.  He  is  more  than 
forty  years  old.  I  know  my  room  waiter  kept 
watch  on  me  until  he  satisfied  himself  I  was 
what  I  claimed  to  be — an  American — and  not 
an  English  spy  posing  as  an  American. 

So,  at  first,  did  the  cheery  little  girl  cashier 
in  the  Arcade  barber  shop  downstairs.  For 
all  I  know,  she  may  still  have  me  under  sus- 
picion and  be  making  daily  reports  on  me  to 
[168] 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


the  secret-service  people.  The  women  help, 
too — and  the  children.  The  wives  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  wealthiest  men  in  the  town  are 
minding  the  sick  and  the  wounded.  The 
mothers  and  the  younger  girls  meet  daily  to 
make  hospital  supplies.  Women  come  to  you 
in  the  cafes  at  night,  wearing  Red  Cross  badges 
on  their  left  arms,  and  shaking  sealed  tin 
canisters  into  which  you  are  expected  to  drop 
contributions  for  invalided  soldiers. 

Since  so  many  of  their  teachers  are  carrying 
rifles  or  wearing  swords,  the  pupils  of  the  gram- 
mar schools  and  the  high  schools  are  being 
organized  into  squads  of  crop-gatherers.  Be- 
ginning next  week,  so  I  hear,  they  will  go  out 
into  the  fields  and  the  orchards  to  assist  in  the 
harvesting  of  the  grain  and  the  fruit.  For 
lack  of  hands  to  get  it  under  cover  the  wheat 
has  already  begun  to  suffer;  but  the  boys  and 
girls  will  bring  it  in. 

It  is  now  half-past  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
forenoon.  At  noon,  sharp,  an  excellent  or- 
chestra will  begin  to  play  in  the  big  white 
casino  maintained  by  the  city,  just  opposite 
my  hotel.  It  will  play  for  an  hour  then,  and 
again  this  afternoon,  and  again,  weather  per- 
mitting, to-night. 

The  townspeople  will  sit  about  at  small, 
white  tables  and  listen  to  the  music  while  they 
sip  their  beer  or  drink  their  coffee.  They 
will  be  soberer  and  less  vivacious  than  I  im- 
agine they  were  two  months  ago;  but  then  these 
[169] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


North  Germans  are  a  sober-minded  race  any- 
how, and  they  take  their  amusements  quietly. 
Also,  they  have  taken  the  bad  tidings  of  the 
last  few  days  from  France  very  quietly. 

During  the  afternoon  crowds  will  gather 
on  the  viaduct,  just  above  the  principal  rail- 
road station,  where  they  will  stand  for  hours 
looking  dovvn  over  the  parapet  into  the  yards 
below.  There  will  be  smaller  crowds  on  the 
heights  of  Rouheide,  on  the  edge  of  the  town, 
where  the  tracks  enter  the  long  tunnel  under 
one  of  the  hills  that  etch  the  boundary  between 
Germany  and  Belgium. 

Rain  or  shine,  these  two  places  are  sure  to 
be  black  with  people,  for  here  they  may  see 
the  trains  shuttle  by,  like  long  bobbins  in  a 
loom  that  never  ceases  from  its  weaving — 
trains  going  west  loaded  with  soldiers  and 
naval  reservists  bound  for  the  front,  and  trains 
headed  east  bearing  prisoners  and  wounded. 
The  raw  material  passes  one  way— that's  the 
new  troops;  the  finished  product  passes  the 
other — the  womided  and  the  sick. 

When  wounded  men  go  by  there  will  be 
cheering,  and  some  of  the  women  are  sure  to 
raise  the  song  of  Die  Wacht  am  Rhein;  and 
within  the  cars  the  crippled  soldiers  will  take 
up  the  chorus  feebly.  God  knows  how  many 
able-bodied  soldiers  already  have  gone  west; 
how  many  maimed  and  crippled  ones  have 
gone  east!  In  the  first  instance  the  number 
must  run  up  into  the  second  million;  of  the 
[170] 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


latter  there  must  have  been  well  above  two 
hundred  thousand. 

No  dead  come  back  from  the  front — at 
least,  not  this  way.  The  Germans  bury  their 
fallen  soldiers  where  they  fall.  Regardless  of 
his  rank,  the  dead  man  goes  into  a  trench. 
If  so  be  he  died  in  battle  he  is  buried,  booted 
and  dressed  just  as  he  died.  And  the  dead  of 
each  day  must  be  got  underground  before 
midnight  of  that  same  day — that  is  the  hard- 
and-fast  rule  wherever  the  Germans  are  hold- 
ing their  ground  or  pressing  forward.  There 
they  will  lie  until  the  Judgment  Day,  unless 
their  kinsfolk  be  of  sufficient  wealth  and  in- 
fluence to  find  their  burial  places  and  dig  them 
up  and  bring  them  home  privily  for  interment. 
Even  so,  it  may  be  days  or  even  weeks  after 
a  man  is  dead  and  buried  before  his  people 
hear  of  it.  It  may  be  they  will  not  hear  of 
it  until  a  letter  written  to  him  in  the  care  of 
his  regiment  and  his  company  comes  back  un- 
opened, with  one  word  in  sinister  red  letters  on 
it — Gefallen! 

At  this  hotel,  yesterday,  I  saw  a  lady  dressed 
in  heavy  black.  She  had  the  saddest,  whitest 
face  I  ever  looked  into,  I  think.  She  sat  in 
the  restaurant  with  two  other  ladies,  who  were 
also  in  black.  The  octogenarian  censor  of  tele- 
grams passed  them  on  the  way  out.  To  her 
two  companions  he  bowed  deeply,  but  at  her 
side  he  halted  and,  bending  very  low,  he  kissed 
her  hand,  and  then  went  away  without  a  word. 
11711 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


The  head  waiter,  who  knows  all  the  gossip  of 
the  house  and  of  half  the  town  besides,  told  us 
about  her.  Her  only  son,  a  lieutenant  of  ar- 
tillery, was  killed  at  the  taking  of  Liege.  It 
was  three  days  before  she  learned  of  his  death, 
though  she  was  here  in  Aachen,  only  a  few 
miles  away;  for  so  slowly  as  this  does  even 
bad  news  travel  in  war  times  when  it  pertains 
to  the  individual. 

Another  week  elapsed  before  her  husband, 
who  is  a  lieutenant-colonel,  could  secure  leave 
of  absence  and  return  from  the  French  border 
to  seek  for  his  son's  body;  and  there  was  still 
another  week  of  searching  before  they  found  it. 
It  was  at  the  bottom  of  a  trench,  under  the 
bodies  of  a  score  or  more  of  his  men;  and  it 
was  in  such  a  state  that  the  mother  had  not 
been  permitted  to  look  on  her  dead  boy's  face. 

Such  things  as  this  must  be  common  enough 
hereabouts,  but  one  hears  very  little  of  them 
and  sees  even  less.  Aix-la-Chapelle  has  suffered 
most  heavily.  The  Aix  regiment  was  shot  to 
pieces  in  the  first  day's  fighting  at  Liege. 
Nearly  half  its  members  were  killed  or  wounded; 
but  astonishingly  few  women  in  mourning  are 
to  be  seen  on  the  street,  and  none  of  the  men 
wear  those  crape  arm  bands  that  are  so  com- 
mon in  Europe  ordinarily;  nor,  except  about 
the  railroad  station,  are  very  many  wounded 
to  be  seen. 

There  are  any  number  of  wounded  privates 
in  the  local  hospitals;  but  there  must  be  a 
[1721 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


rule  against  their  appearance  in  public  places, 
for  it  is  only  occasionally  that  I  meet  one 
abroad.  Slightly  wounded  officers  are  more 
plentiful.  I  judge  from  this  that  no  such  re- 
striction applies  to  them  as  applies  to  the 
common  soldiers.  This  hotel  is  full  of  them — 
young  officers  mostly,  with  their  heads  tied 
up  or  their  arms  in  black  silk  slings,  or  limping 
about  on  canes  or  crutches. 

Until  a  few  days  ago  the  columns  of  the  back 
pages  of  the  Aix  and  Cologne  papers  were 
black-edged  with  cards  inserted  by  relatives 
in  memory  of  officers  who  had  fallen — "For 
King  and  Fatherland!"  the  cards  always  said. 
I  counted  thirteen  of  these  death  notices  in 
one  issue  of  a  Cologne  paper.  Now  they  have 
almost  disappeared.  I  imagine  that,  because 
of  the  depressing  effect  of  such  a  mass  of  these 
publications  on  the  public  mind,  the  families 
of  killed  officers  have  been  asked  to  refrain 
from  reciting  their  losses  in  print.  Yet  there 
are  not  wanting  signs  that  the  grim  total  piles 
up  by  the  hour  and  the  day. 

Late  this  afternoon,  when  I  walk  around  to 
the  American  consulate,  I  shall  pass  the  office 
of  the  chief  local  paper;  and  there  I  am  sure 
to  find  anywhere  from  seventy-five  to  a  hun- 
dred men  and  women  waiting  for  the  appear- 
ance on  a  bulletin  board  of  the  latest  list  of 
dead,  wounded  and  missing  men  who  are  cred- 
ited to  Aix-la-Chapelle  and  its  vicinity.  A 
new  list  goes  up  each  afternoon,  replacing  the 
[1731 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


list  of  the  day  before.  Sometimes  it  contains 
but  a  few  names;  sometimes  a  good  many. 
Then  there  will  be  piteous  scenes  for  a  little 
while;  but  presently  the  mourners  will  go 
away,    struggling    to    compose    themselves    as 

'  they  go;  for  their  Kaiser  has  asked  them  to 
make  no  show  of  their  loss  among  their  neigh- 
bors. Having  made  the  supremest  sacrifice 
they  can  make,  short  of  offering  up  their  own 
lives,  they  now  make  another  and  hide  their 
grief  away  from  sight.  Surely,  this  war  spares 
none  at  all — neither  those  who  fight  nor  those 
who  stay  behind. 

Towar,d  dusk  the  streets  will  fill  up  with 
promenaders.  Perhaps  a  regiment  or  so  of 
troops,  temporarily  quartered  here  on  the  way 
to  the  front,  will  clank  by,  bound  for  their 
barracks  in  divers  big  music  halls.  The  squares 
may  be  quite  crowded  with  uniforms;  or  there 
may  be  only  one  gray  coat  in  proportion  to 
three  or  four  black  ones — this  last  is  the  com- 
moner ratio.  It  all  depends  on  the  movements 
of  the  forces. 

To-night  the  cafes  will  be  open  and  the 
moving-picture  places  will  run  full  blast;  and 

»  the  free  concert  will  go  on  and  there  will  be 
services  in  the  cathedral  of  Charlemagne. 
The  cafes  that  had  English  names  when  the 
war  began  have  German  ones  now.  Thus  the 
Bristol  has  become  the  Crown  Prmce  Cafe, 
and  the  Piccadilly  is  the  Germania;  but  other- 
wise they  are  just  as  they  were  before  the  war 
[1741 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


started,  and  the  business  in  them  is  quite  as 
good,  the  residents  say,  as  it  ever  was.  Prices 
are  no  higher  than  they  used  to  be — at  least  I 
have  not  found  them  high. 

After  the  German  fashion  the  diners  will 
eat  slowly  and  heavily;  and  afterward  they 
will  sit  in  clusters  of  three  or  four,  drinking 
mugs  of  Munich  or  Pilsner,  and  talking  de- 
liberately. At  the  Crown  Prince  there  will  be 
dancing,  and  at  two  or  three  other  places  there 
will  be  music  and  maybe  singing;  but  at  the 
Kaiserhof,  where  I  shall  dine,  there  is  nothing 
more  exciting  than  beer  and  conversation.  It 
was  there,  two  nights  ago,  I  met  at  the  same 
time  three  Germans  representing  three  dom- 
inant classes  in  the  life  of  their  country,  and 
had  from  each  of  them  the  viewpoint  of  his 
class  toward  the  war.  They  were,  respectively, 
a  business  man,  a  scientist,  and  a  soldier. 
The  business  man  belongs  to  a  firm  of  brothers 
which  ranks  almost  with  the  Krupps  in  com- 
mercial importance.  It  has  branches  in  many 
cities  and  agencies  and  plants  in  half  a  dozen 
countries.    He  said: 

"We  had  not  our  daily  victory  to-day,  eh.'' 
Well,  so  it  goes;  we  must  not  expect  to  win 
always.  We  must  have  reverses,  and  heavy 
ones  too;  but  in  the  end  we  must  win.  To 
lose  now  would  mean  national  extinction.  To 
win  means  Germany's  commercial  and  military 
preeminence  in  this  hemisphere. 

"There  can  be  but  one  outcome  of  this  war 
[1751 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


— either  Germany,  as  an  empire,  will  cease  to 
exist,  or  she  will  emerge  the  greatest  Power, 
except  the  United  States,  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  And  so  sure  are  we  of  the  result  that 
to-day  my  brothers  and  I  bought  ground  for 
doubling  the  size  and  capacity  of  our  largest 
plant. 

"In  six  weeks  from  now  we  shall  have  beaten 
France;  m  six  months  we  shall  have  driven 
Russia  to  cover.  For  England  it  will  take  a 
year — perhaps  longer.  And  then,  as  in  all 
games,  big  and  little,  the  losers  will  pay.  France 
will  be  made  to  pay  an  indemnity  from  which 
she  will  never  recover. 

"Of  Belgium  I  think  we  shall  take  a  slice  of 
seacoast;  Germany  needs  ports  on  the  English 
Channel.  Russia  will  be  so  humbled  that  no 
longer  will  the  Muscovite  peril  threaten  Europe. 
Great  Britain  we  shall  crush  utterly.  She  shall 
be  shorn  of  her  navy  and  she  shall  lose  her 
colonies — certainly  she  shall  lose  India  and 
Egypt.  She  will  become  a  third-class  Power 
and  she  will  stay  a  third-class  Power.  Forget 
Japan — Germany  will  punish  Japan  in  due 
season. 

"Within  five  years  from  now  I  predict 
there  will  be  an  offensive  and  defensive  alliance 
of  all  the  Teutonic  and  all  the  Scandinavian 
races  of  Europe,  with  Bulgaria  included, 
holding  absolute  dominion  over  this  continent 
and  stretching  in  an  unbroken  line  from  the 
North  Sea  to  the  Adriatic  and  the  Black  Sea. 
[1761 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


"Europe  is  to  have  a  new  map,  my  friends, 
and  Germany  will  be  in  the  middle  of  that 
map.  When  this  has  been  accomplished  we 
shall  talk  about  disarmament — not  before. 
And  first,  we  shall  disarm  our  enemies  who 
forced  this  war  on  us." 

The  scientist  spoke  next.  He  is  a  tall,  spec- 
tacled, earnest  Westphalian,  who  has  invented 
and  patented  over  a  hundred  separate  devices 
used  in  electric-lighting  properties,  and,  in 
between,  has  found  time  to  travel  round  the 
world  several  times  and  write  a  book  or 
two. 

"I  do  not  believe  in  war,"  he  said.  "War 
has  no  place  in  the  civilization  of  the  world 
to-day;  but  this  war  was  inevitable.  Germany 
had  to  expand  or  be  suffocated.  And  out  of 
this  war  good  will  come  for  all  the  world, 
especially  for  Europe.  We  Germans  are  the 
most  industrious,  the  mpst  earnest  and  the 
best-educated  race  on  this  side  of  the  ocean. 
To-day  one-fourth  of  the  population  of  Belgium 
cannot  read  and  write.  Under  German  in- 
fluence illiteracy  will  disappear  from  among 
them.  Russia  stands  for  reaction;  England 
for  selfishness  and  perfidy;  France  for  deca- 
dence. Germany  stands  for  progress.  Do  not 
believe  the  claims  of  our  foes  that  our  Kaiser 
wishes  to  be  another  Napoleon  and  hold 
Europe  under  his  thumb.  What  he  wants  for 
Germany  and  what  he  means  to  have  is,  first, 
breathing  room  for  his  people;  and  after  that 
[177] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


a  fair  share  of  the  commercial  opportunities 
of  the  world. 

"German  enlightenment  and  German  insti- 
tutions will  do  the  rest.  And  after  this  war — 
if  we  Germans  win  it — there  will  never  be  an- 
other universal  war." 

The  soldier  spoke  last.  He  is  a  captain  of 
field  artillery,  a  member  of  a  distinguished 
Prussian  family,  and  one  of  the  most  noted 
big-game  hunters  in  Europe.  Three  weeks 
ago,  in  front  of  Charleroi,  a  French  sharp- 
shooter put  a  bullet  in  him.  It  passed  through 
his  left  forearm,  pierced  one  lung  and  lodged 
in  the  muscles  of  his  breast,  where  it  lies  im- 
bedded. In  a  week  from  now  he  expects  to 
rejoin  his  command. 

To  look  at  him  you  would  never  guess  that 
he  had  so  recently  been  wounded;  his  color  is 
high  and  he  moves  with  the  stiff,  precise  alert- 
ness of  the  German  army  man.  He  is  still 
wearing  the  coat  he  wore  in  the  fight;  there  are 
two  ragged  little  holes  in  the  left  sleeve  and  a 
puncture  in  the  side  of  it;  and  it  is  spotted 
with  stiff,  dry,  brown  stains. 

"I  don't  presume  to  know  anything  about 
the  political  or  commercial  aspects  of  this 
war,"  he  said  over  his  beer  mug;  "but  I  do 
know  this:  War  was  forced  on  us  by  these 
other  Powers.  They  were  jealous  of  us  and 
they  made  the  Austrian-Servian  quarrel  their 
quarrel.  But  v/hen  v/ar  came  we  were  ready 
and  they  were  not. 

[1781 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


"Not  until  the  mobilization  was  ordered  did 
the  people  of  Germany  know  the  color  of  the 
field  uniform  of  their  soldiers;  yet  four  millions 
of  these  service  uniforms  were  made  and  fin- 
ished and  waiting  in  our  military  storehouses. 
'  Not  until  after  the  first  shot  was  fired  did  we 
who  are  in  the  army  know  how  many  army 
corps  we  had,  or  the  names  of  their  com- 
manders, or  even  the  names  of  the  officers 
composing  the  general  staff. 

"A  week  after  we  took  the  field  our  infantry, 
in  heavy  marching  order,  was  covering  fifty 
kilometers  a  day — thirty  of  your  American 
miles^and  doing  it  day  after  day  without 
straggling  and  without  any  footsore  men  drop- 
ping behind. 

"Do  these  things  count  in  the  sum  totaLf* 
I  say  they  do.  Our  army  will  win  because  it 
deserves  to  win  through  being  ready  and  being 
complete  and  being  efficient.  Don't  discount 
the  efficiency  of  our  navy  either.  Remember, 
we  Germans  have  the  name  of  being  thorough. 
When  our  fleet  meets  the  British  fleet  I  think 
you  will  find  that  we  have  a  few  Krupp  sur- 
prises for  them." 

I  may  meet  these  confident  gentlemen  to- 
night. If  not,  it  is  highly  probable  I  shall 
meet  others  who  are  equally  confident,  and 
who  will  express  the  same  views,  which  they 
hold  because  they  are  the  views  of  the  German 
people. 

At  eleven  o'clock,  when  I  start  back  to  the 
[1791 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


hotel,  the  streets  will  be  almost  empty.  Aix 
will  have  gone  to  bed,  and  in  bed  it  will  peace- 
fully stay  unless  a  militarj^  Zeppelin  sails 
over  its  roof  trees,  making  a  noise  like  ten 
million  locusts  all  buzzing  at  once.  There  were 
two  Zeppelins  aloft  last  night,  and  from  my 
window  I  saw  one  of  them  quite  plainly.  It 
was  hanging  almost  stationary  in  the  northern 
sky,  like  a  huge  yellow  gourd.  After  a  while 
it  made  off  toward  the  west.  One  day  last 
week  three  of  them  passed,  all  bound  presum- 
ably for  Paris  or  Antwerp,  or  even  London. 
That  time  the  people  grew  a  bit  excited;  but 
now  they  take  a  Zeppelin  much  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  only  wonder  mildly  where  it 
came  from  and  whither  it  is  going. 

As  for  to-morrow,  I  imagine  to-morrow  will 
be  aiiother  to-day;  but  yesterday  was  differ- 
ent. I  had  a  streak  of  luck.  It  is  forbidden 
to  civilians,  and  more  particularly  to  corre- 
spondents, to  go  prowling  about  eastern  Bel- 
gium just  now;  but  I  found  a  friend  in  a  nat- 
uralized German-American,  formerly  of  Chi- 
cago, but  living  now  in  Germany,  though  he 
still  retains  his  citizenship  in  the  United 
States. 

Like  every  one  else  in  Aachen,  he  is  doing 
something  for  the  government,  though  I  can 
only  guess  at  the  precise  nature  of  his  services. 
At  any  rate  he  had  an  automobile,  a  scarce 
thing  to  find  in  private  hands  in  these  times; 
and,  what  was  more,  he  had  a  military  pass 
[1801 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


authorizing  him  to  go  to  Liege  and  to  take 
two  passengers  along.  He  invited  me  to  go 
with  him  for  a  day's  ride  through  the  country 
where  the  very  first  blows  were  swapped  m 
the  western  theater  of  hostilities. 

We  started  off  in  the  middle  of  a  fickle- 
minded  shower,  which  first  blew  puffs  of  wet- 
ness in  our  faces,  like  spray  on  a  flawy  day  at 
sea,  and  then  broke  oft'  to  let  the  sun  shine 
through  for  a  minute  or  two.  For  two  or 
three  kilometers  after  clearing  the  town  we 
ran  through  a  district  that  smiled  with  peace 
and  groaned  with  plenty.  On  the  verandas  of 
funny  little  gray  roadhouses  with  dripping 
red  roofs  oflBcers  sat  over  their  breakfast 
coffee.  A  string  of  wagons  passed  us,  bound 
inward,  full  of  big,  white,  clean-looking  Ger- 
man pigs.  A  road  builder,  repairing  the  ruts 
made  by  the  guns  and  baggage  trains,  stood 
aside  for  us  to  pass  and  pulled  off  his  hat  to 
us.  This  was  Europe  as  it  used  to  be — Europe 
as  most  American  tourists  knew  it. 

We  came  to  a  tall  barber  pole  which  a  care- 
less painter  had  striped  with  black  on  white 
instead  of  with  red  on  white,  and  we  knew 
by  that  we  had  arrived  at  the  frontier.  Also, 
there  stood  alongside  the  pole  a  royal  forest 
ranger  in  green,  with  a  queer  cockaded  hat 
on  his  head,  doing  sentry  duty.  As  we  stopped 
to  show  him  our  permits,  and  to  give  him  a 
ripe  pear  and  a  Cologne  paper,  half  a  dozen 
soldiers  came  tumbling  out  of  the  guardroom 
[1811 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


in  the  little  customhouse,  and  ran  up  to  beg 
from  us,  not  pears,  but  papers.  Clear  to 
Liege  we  were  to  be  importuned  every  few 
rods  by  soldiers  begging  for  papers.  Some 
had  small  wooden  sign-boards  bearing  the  word 
Zeitung,  which  they  would  lift  and  swing  across 
the  path  of  an  approaching  automobile.  I 
began  to  believe  after  a  while  that  if  a  man 
had  enough  newspapers  in  stock  he  could  bribe 
his  way  through  the  German  troops  clear  into 
France,  These  fellows  who  gathered  about 
us  now  were  of  the  Landsturm,  men  in  their 
late  thirties  and  early  forties,  with  long, 
shaggy  mustacljes.  Their  kind  forms  the 
handle  of  the  mighty  hammer  whose  steel 
nose  is  battering  at  France.  Every  third  one 
of  them  wore  spectacles,  showing  that  the 
back  lines  of  the  army  are  extensively  addicted 
to  the  favorite  Teutonic  sport  of  being  near- 
sighted. Also,  their  coat  sleeves  invariably 
were  too  long  for  them,  and  hid  their  big  hands 
almost  to  the  knuckles.  This  is  a  characteristic 
I  have  everywhere  noted  among  the  German 
privates.  If  the  French  soldier's  coat  is  over- 
lengthy  in  the  skirt  the  German's  is  ultra- 
generous  with  cloth  in  the  sleeves.  I  saw 
that  their  hair  was  beginning  to  get  shaggy, 
showing  that  they  had  been  in  the  field  some 
weeks,  since  every  German  soldier — officer  and 
private  alike — leaves  the  barracks  so  close- 
cropped  that  his  skin  shows  pinky  through  the 
bristles.  Among  them  was  one  chap  in  blue 
[1821 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


sailor's  garb,  left  behind  doubtless  when  forty- 
five  hundred  naval  reserves  passed  through 
three  days  before  to  work  the  big  guns  in  front 
of  Antwerp. 

We  went  on.  At  first  there  was  nothing  to 
show  we  had  entered  Belgium  except  that  the 
Prussian  flag  did  not  hang  from  a  pole  in  front 
of  every  farmhouse,  but  only  in  front  of  every 
fourth  house,  say,  or  every  fifth  one.  Then 
came  stretches  of  drenched  fields,  vacant  ex- 
cept for  big  black  ravens  and  nimble  piebald 
magpies,  which  bickered  among  themselves  in 
the  neglected  and  matted  grain;  and  then  we 
swung  round  a  curve  in  the  rutted  roadway 
and  were  in  the  town  of  Battice. 

No;  we  were  not  in  the  town  of  Battice. 
We  were  where  the  town  of  Battice  had  been — 
where  it  stood  six  weeks  ago.  It  was  famous 
then  for  its  fat,  rich  cheeses  and  its  green 
damson  plums.  Now,  and  no  doubt  for  years 
to  come,  it  will  be  chiefly  notable  as  having 
been  the  town  where,  it  is  said,  Belgian  civilians 
first  fired  on  the  German  troops  from  roofs 
and  windows,  and  where  the  Germans  first 
inaugurated  their  ruthless  system  of  reprisal 
on  houses  and  people  alike. 

Literally  this  town  no  longer  existed.  It 
was  a  scrap-heap,  if  you  like,  but  not  a  town. 
Here  had  been  a  great  trampling  out  of  the 
grapes  of  wrath,  and  most  sorrowful  was  the 
vintage  that  remained. 

It  was  a  hard  thing  to  level  these  Belgian 
[183] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


houses  absolutely,  for  they  were  mainly  built 
of  stone  or  of  thick  brick  coated  over  with  a 
hard  cement.  So,  generally,  the  walls  stood, 
even  in  Battice;  but  always  the  roofs  were 
gone,  and  the  window  openings  w^ere  smudged 
cavities,  through  which  you  looked  and  saw 
square  patches  of  the  sky  if  your  eyes  inclined 
upward,  or  else  blackened  masses  of  ruination 
if  you  gazed  straight  in  at  the  interiors.  Once 
in  a  while  one  had  been  thrown  flat.  Probably 
big  guns  operated  here.  In  such  a  case  there 
was  an  avalanche  of  broken  masonry  cascading 
out  into  the  roadway. 

Midway  of  the  mile-long  avenue  of  utter 
waste  which  we  now  traversed  we  came  on  a 
sort  of  small  square.  Here  was  the  yellow 
village  church.  It  lacked  a  spire  and  a  cross, 
and  the  front  door  was  gone,  so  we  could  see 
the  wrecked  altar  and  the  splintered  pews 
within.  Flanking  the  church  there  had  been 
a  communal  hall,  which  was  now  shapeless, 
irredeemable  wreckage.  A  public  well  had  stood 
in  the  open  space  between  church  and  hall, 
with  a  design  of  stone  pillars  about  it.  The 
open  mouth  of  the  well  we  could  see  was  choked 
with  foul  debris;  but  a  shell  had  struck  squarely 
among  the  pillars  and  they  fell  inward  like 
wigwam  poles,  forming  a  crazy  apex.  I  re- 
member distinctly  two  other  things:  a  picture 
of  an  elderly  man  with  whiskers — one  of 
those  smudged  atrocities  that  are  called  in 
the  States  crayon  portraits — hanging  undam- 
[1841 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


aged  on  the  naked  wall  of  what  had  been  an 
upper  bedroom;  and  a  wayside  shrine  of  the 
sort  so  common  in  the  Catholic  countries  of 
Europe.  A  shell  had  hit  it  a  glancing  blow, 
so  that  the  little  china  figure  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin  lay  in  bits  behind  the  small  barred 
opening  of  the  shrine. 

Of  living  creatures  there  was  none.  Hereto- 
fore, in  all  the  blasted  towns  I  had  visited, 
there  was  some  human  life  stirring.  One 
could  count  on  seeing  one  of  the  old  women  who 
are  so  numerous  in  these  Belgian  hamlets — 
more  numerous,  I  think,  than  anywhere  else 
on  earth.  In  my  mind  I  had  learned  to  asso- 
ciate such  a  sight  with  at  least  one  old  woman 
— an  incredibly  old  woman,  with  a  back  bent 
like  a  measuring  worm's,  and  a  cap  on  her 
scanty  hair,  and  a  face  crosshatched  with  a 
million  wrinkles — who  would  be  pottering 
about  at  the  back  of  some  half-ruined  house 
or  maybe  squatting  in  a  desolated  doorway 
staring  at  us  with  her  rheumy,  puckered  eyes. 
Or  else  there  would  be  a  hunchback — crooked 
spines  being  almost  as  common  in  parts  of 
Belgium  as  goiters  are  in  parts  of  Switzerland. 
But  Battice  had  become  an  empty  tomb,  and 
was  as  lonely  and  as  silent  as  a  tomb.  Its 
people — those  who  survived — had  fled  from  it 
as  from  an  abomination. 

Beyond  Battice  stood  another  village,  called 
Herve;  and  Herve  was  Battice  all  over  again, 
with  variations.  At  this  place,  during  the 
[185] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


first  few  hours  of  actual  hostilities  between 
the  little  country  and  the  big  one,  the  Belgians 
had  tried  to  stem  the  inpouring  German  flood, 
as  was  proved  by  wrecks  of  barricades  in  the 
high  street.  One  barricade  had  been  built  of 
wagon  bodies  and  the  big  iron  hods  of  road- 
scrapers;  the  wrecks  of  these  were  still  piled  at 
the  road's  edge.  Yet  there  remained  tangible 
proof  of  the  German  claim  that  they  did  not 
harry  and  burn  indiscriminately,  except  in 
cases  where  the  officers  gave  the  command  to 
perpetrate  such  cruelties. 

Here  and  there,  on  the  principal  street,  in 
a  row  of  ruins,  stood  a  single  house  that  was 
intact  and  undamaged.  It  was  plain  enough 
to  be  seen  that  pains  had  been  taken  to  spare 
it  from  the  common  fate  of  its  neighbors. 
Also,  I  glimpsed  one  short  side  street  that  had 
come  out  of  the  fiery  visitation  whole  and 
unscathed,  proving,  if  it  proved  anything,  that 
even  in  their  red  heat  the  Germans  had  picked 
and  chosen  the  fruit  for  the  wine  press  of  their 
vengeance. 

After  Herve  we  encountered  no  more  destruc- 
tion by  wholesale,  but  only  destruction  by 
piecemeal,  until,  nearing  Li^ge,  we  passed 
what  remained  of  the  most  northerly  of  the 
ring  of  fortresses  that  formed  the  city's  de- 
fenses. The  conquerors  had  dismantled  it 
and  thrown  down  the  guns,  so  that  of  the  fort 
proper  there  was  nothing  except  a  low  earthen 
wall,  almost  like  a  natural  ridge  in  the  earth. 
[1861 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


All  about  it  was  an  entanglement  of  barbed 
wire;  the  strands  were  woven  and  interwoven, 
tangled  and  twined  together,  until  they  sug- 
gested nothing  so  much  as  a  great  patch  of 
blackberry  briers  after  the  leaves  have  dropped 
from  the  vines  in  the  fall  of  the  year.  To  take 
the  works  the  Germans  had  to  cut  through 
these  trochas.  It  seemed  impossible  to  believe 
human  beings  could  penetrate  them,  especially 
when  one  was  told  that  the  Belgians  charged 
some  of  the  wires  with  high  electricity,  so  that 
those  of  the  advancing  party  who  touched  them 
were  frightfully  burned  and  fell,  with  their 
garments  blazing,  into  the  jagged  wire  bram- 
bles, and  were  held  there  until  they  died. 

Before  the  charge  and  the  final  hand-to-hand 
fight,  however,  there  was  shelling.  There  was 
much  shelling.  Shells  from  the  German  guns 
that  fell  short  or  overshot  the  mark  descended 
in  the  fields,  and  for  a  mile  round  these  fields 
were  plowed  as  though  hujidrads  of  plowshares 
had  sheared  the  sod  this  way  and  that,  until 
hardly  a  blade  of  grass  was  left  to  grow  in  its 
ordained  place.  Where  shells  had  burst  after 
they  struck  were  holes  in  the  earth  five  or  six 
feet  across  and  five  or  six  feet  deep.  Shells 
from  the  German  guns  and  from  the  Belgian 
guns  had  made  a  most  hideous  hash  of  a  cluster 
of  small  cottages  flanking  a  small  smelting 
plant  which  stood  directly  in  the  line  of  fire. 
Some  of  these  houses — workmen's  homes,  I 
suppose  they  had  been — ^were  of  frame,  sheathed 
[1871 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


over  with  squares  of  tin  put  on  in  a  diamond 
pattern;  and  you  could  see  places  where  a  shell, 
striking  such  a  wall  a  glancing  blow,  had 
scaled  it  as  a  fish  is  scaled  with  a  knife,  leaving 
the  bare  wooden  ribs  showing  below.  The 
next  house,  and  the  next,  had  been  hit  squarely 
and  plumply  amidships,  and  they  were  gutted 
as  fishes  are  gutted.  One  house  in  twenty, 
perhaps,  would  be  quite  whole,  except  for 
broken  windows  and  fissures  in  the  roof — as 
though  the  whizzing  shells  had  spared  it  de- 
liberatel3^ 

I  recall  that  of  one  house  there  was  left 
standing  only  a  breadth  of  front  wall  between 
the  places  where  windows  had  been.  It  rose 
in  a  ragged  column  to  the  line  of  the  roof- 
rafters — only,  of  course,  there  was  neither  roof 
nor  rafter  now.  On  the  face  of  the  column, 
as  though  done  in  a  spirit  of  bitter  irony,  was 
posted  a  proclamation,  signed  by  the  burgo- 
master and  the  military  commandant,  calling 
on  the  vanished  dwellers  of  this  place  to  pre- 
serve their  tranquillity. 

On  the  side  of  the  fort  away  from  the  city, 
and  in  the  direction  whence  we  had  come,  a 
corporal's  guard  had  established  itself  in  a 
rent-asunder  house  in  order  to  be  out  of  the 
wet.  On  the  front  of  the  house  they  had  hung 
a  captured  Belgian  bugler's  uniform  and  a 
French  dragoon's  overcoat,  which  latter  gar- 
ment was  probably  a  trophy  brought  back 
from  the  lower  lines  of  fighting;  it  made  you 
[1881 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


think  of  an  old-clothes-man's  shop.  The  cor- 
poral came  forth  to  look  at  our  passes  before 
permitting  us  to  go  on.  He  was  a  dumpy, 
good-natured-looking  Hanoverian  with  patchy 
saffron  whiskers  sprouting  out  on  him. 

" Ach!  yes,"  he  said  in  answer  to  my  con- 
ductor's question.  "Things  are  quiet  enough 
here  now;  but  on  Monday" — that  would  be 
three  days  before — "we  shot  sixteen  men  here 
— rioters  and  civilians  who  fired  on  our  troops, 
and  one  graverobber — -a  dirty  hound!  They 
are  yonder." 

He  swung  his  arm;  and  following  its  swing 
we  saw  a  mound  of  fresh-turned  clay,  perhaps 
twenty  feet  in  length,  which  made  a  yellow 
streak  against  the  green  of  a  small  inclosed 
pasture  about  a  hundred  yards  away.  We 
saw  many  such  mounds  that  day;  and  this 
one  where  the  accused  sixteen  lay  was  the 
shortest  of  the  lot.  Some  mounds  were  fifty 
or  sixty  feet  in  length.  I  presume  there  were 
distinguishing  marks  on  the  filled-up  trenches 
where  the  German  dead  lay,  but  from  the 
automobile  we  could  make  out  none. 

As  we  started  on  again,  after  giving  the  little 
Hanoverian  the  last  treasured  copy  of  a  paper 
we  had  managed  to  keep  that  long  against 
continual  importunity,  a  big  Belgian  dog,  with 
a  dragging  tail  and  a  sharp  jackal  nose,  loped 
round  from  behind  an  undamaged  cow  barn 
which  stood  back  of  the  riven  shell  of  a  house 
where  the  soldiers  were  quartered.  He  had 
fl89l 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


the  air  about  him  of  looking  for  somebody  or 
something. 

He  stopped  short,  sniffing  and  whining,  at 
sight  of  the  gray  coats  bunched  in  the  door- 
way; and  then,  running  back  a  few  yards,  vvith 
his  head  all  the  time  turned  to  watch  the 
strangers,  he  sat  on  his  haunches,  stuck  his 
pointed  muzzle  upward  toward  the  sky  and 
fetched  a  long,  homesick  howl  from  the  bottom 
of  his  disconsolate  canine  soul.  When  we 
turned  a  bend  in  the  road,  to  enter  the  first 
recognizable  street  of  Liege,  he  was  still 
hunkered  down  there  in  the  rain.  He  finished 
the  picture;  he  keynoted  it.  The  composition 
of  it — for  me — was  perfect  now. 

I  mean  no  levity  when  I  say  that  Liege  was 
well  shaken  before  taken;  but  merely  that  the 
phrase  is  the  apt  one  for  use,  because  it  better 
expresses  the  truth  than  any  other  I  can  think 
of.  Yet,  considering  what  it  went  through, 
last  month,  Liege  seemed  to  have  emerged  in 
better  shape  than  one  would  have  expected. 

Driving  into  the  town  I  saw  more  houses 
with  white  flags — the  emblem  of  complete 
surrender — fluttering  from  sill  and  coping, 
than  houses  bearing  marks  of  the  siege.  In 
the  bombardment  the  shells  mostly  appeared 
to  have  passed  above  the  town — which  was 
natural  enough,  seeing  that  the  prmcipal 
Belgian  forts  stood  on  the  hilltops  westward 
of  and  overlooking  the  city;  and  the  principal 
German  batteries — at  least,  until  the  last  day 
[1901 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


of  fighting — were  posted  behind  temporary  de- 
fenses, hastily  thrown  up,  well  to  the  east  and 
north. 

Liege,  squatted  in  the  natural  amphitheater 
'  below,  practically  escaped  the  fire  of  the  big 
guns.  The  main  concern  of  the  noncombatants, 
they  tell  me,  was  to  shelter  themselves  from  the 
street  fighting,  which,  by  all  accounts,  was  both 
stubborn  and  sanguinary.  The  doughty  Wal- 
loons who  live  in  this  corner  of  Belgium  have  had 
the  name  of  being  sincere  and  willing  workers 
with  bare  steel  since  the  days  when  Charles 
the  Bold,  of  Burgundy,  sought  to  curb  their 
rebellious  spirits  by  razing  their  city  walls 
and  massacring  some  ten  thousand  of  them. 
And  quite  a  spell  before  that,  I  believe,  Julius 
Csesar  found  them  tough  to  bend  and  hard  to 
break. 

As  for  the  Germans,  checked  as  they  had 
been  in  their  rush  on  France  by  a  foe  whom 
they  had  regarded  as  too  puny  to  count  as 
a  factor  in  the  war,  they  sacrificed  themselves 
by  hundreds  and  thousands  to  win  breathing 
space  behind  standing  walls  until  their  great 
seventeen-inch  siege  guns  could  be  brought 
from  Essen  and  mounted  by  the  force  of  engi- 
neers who  came  for  that  purpose  direct  from 
the  Kj-upp  works. 

In  that  portion  of  the  town  lying  west  of 

the    Meuse    we    counted    perhaps    ten    houses 

that    were    leveled    flat    and    perhaps    twenty 

that   were   now   but   burnt-out,   riddled   hulls 

[1911 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


of  houses,  as  empty  and  useless  as  so  many 
shucked  pea-pods.  Of  the  bridges  spanning 
the  river,  the  principal  one,  a  handsome  four- 
span  structure  of  stone  ornamented  with  stone 
figures  of  river  gods,  lay  now  in  shattered  frag- 
ments, choking  the  current,  where  the  Belgians 
themselves  had  blown  it  apart.  One  more 
bridge,  or  perhaps  two — I  cannot  be  sure — 
were  closed  to  traffic  because  dynamite  had 
made  them  unsafe;  but  the  remaining  bridges, 
of  which  I  think  there  were  three,  showed  no 
signs  of  rough  treatment.  Opposite  the  great 
University  there  was  a  big,  black,  ragged  scar 
to  show  where  a  block  of  dwellings  had  stood. 

Liege,  to  judge  from  its  surface  aspect, 
could  not  well  have  been  quieter.  Business 
went  on;  buyers  and  sellers  filled  the  side 
streets  and  dotted  the  long  stone  quays.  Old 
Flemish  men  fished  industriously  below  the 
wrecked  stone  bridge,  where  the  debris  made 
new  eddies  in  the  swift,  narrow  stream;  and 
blue  pigeons  swarmed  in  the  plaza  before  the 
Palais  de  Justice,  giving  to  the  scene  a  sugges- 
tion of  St.  Mark's  Square  at  Venice, 

The  German  Landwehr,  who  were  every- 
where about,  treated  the  inhabitants  civilly 
enough,  and  the  inhabitants  showed  no  out- 
ward resentment  against  the  Germans.  But 
beneath  the  lid  a  whole  potful  of  potential 
trouble  was  brewing,  if  one  might  believe  what 
the  Germans  told  us.  We  talked  with  a  young 
lieutenant  of  infantry  who  in  more  peaceful 
[  192 1 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


times  had  been  a  staff  cartoonist  for  a  Berlin 
comic  paper.  He  received  us  beneath  the 
portico  of  the  Theatre  Royale,  built  after  the 
model  of  the  Odeon  in  Paris.  Two  waspish 
rapid-fire  guns  stood  just  within  the  shelter 
of  the  columns,  with  their  black  snouts  point- 
ing this  way  and  that  to  command  the  sweep 
of  the  three-cornered  Place  du  Theatre.  A 
company  of  soldiers  was  quartered  in  the 
theater  itself.  At  night,  so  the  lieutenant  said, 
those  men  who  were  off  duty  rummaged  the 
costumes  out  of  the  dressing  rooms,  put  them 
on,  and  gave  mock  plays,  with  music.  An 
oflScer's  horse  occupied  what  I  think  must  have 
been  the  box  office.  It  put  its  head  out  of  a 
little  window  just  over  our  heads  and  nickered 
when  other  horses  passed.  Against  the  side 
of  the  building  were  posters  advertising  a 
French  company  to  play  the  Gallicized  version 
of  an  American  farce — "Baby  Mine" — by  Mar- 
garet Mayo.  The  borders  of  the  posters  were 
ornamented  with  prints  of  American  flags  done 
in  the  proper  colors. 

"Yes,  Liege  seems  quiet  enough,"  said  the 
lieutenant;  "but  we  expect  a  revolt  to  break 
out  at  any  time.  We  expected  it  last  night, 
and  the  guard  in  the  streets  was  tripled  and 
doubled;  and  these  little  dears" — patting  the 
muzzle  of  one  of  the  machine  guns — "were 
put  here;  and  more  like  them  were  mounted 
on  the  porticoes  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  and  the 
Palais  de  Justice.  So  nothing  happened  in 
[193] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


the  city  proper,  though  in  the  outskirts  three 
soldiers  disappeared  and  are  supposed  to  have 
been  murdered,  and  I  hear  a  high  officer" — he 
did  not  give  the  name  or  the  rank — "was  way- 
laid and  killed  just  beyond  the  environs. 

"Now  we  fear  that  the  uprising  may  come 
to-night.  For  the  last  three  days  the  resi- 
dents, in  great  numbers,  have  been  asking 
for  permits  to  leave  Liege  and  go  into  neutral 
territory  in  Holland,  or  to  other  parts  of  their 
own  country.  To  us  this  sudden  exodus — 
there  seems  to  be  no  reason  for  it — looks 
significant. 

"These  people  are  naturally  turbulent.  Al- 
ways they  have  been  so.  Most  of  them  are 
makers  of  parts  for  firearms — gunmaking,  you 
know,  was  the  principal  industry  here — and 
they  are  familiar  with  weapons;  and  many  of 
the  men  are  excellent  shots.  This  increases 
the  danger.  At  first  they  were  content  to 
ambush  single  soldiers  who  strayed  into  obscure 
quarters  after  dark.  Now  it  is  forbidden  for 
less  than  three  soldiers  in  a  party  to  go  any- 
where at  night;  and  they  think  from  this  that 
we  are  afraid,  and  are  growing  more  daring. 

"By  day  they  smile  at  us  and  bow,  and  are 
as  polite  as  dancing  masters;  but  at  night 
the  same  men  who  smile  at  us  will  cheerfully 
cut  the  throat  of  any  German  who  is  foolish 
enough  to  venture  abroad  alone. 

"Besides,  this  town  and  all  the  towns  be- 
tween here  and  Brussels  are  being  secretly 
[194] 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


flooded  with  papers  printed  in  French  telHng 
the  people  that  we  have  been  beaten  every- 
where to  the  south,  and  that  the  AHies  are 
but  a  few  miles  away;  and  that  if  they  will 
rise  in  numbers  and  destroy  the  garrisons  re- 
enforcements  will  arrive  the  next  morning  to 
hold  the  district  against  us. 

"If  they  do  rise  it  will  be  Louvain  all  over 
again.  We  shall  burn  Liege  and  kill  all  who 
are  suspected  of  being  in  league  against  our 
troops.  Assuredly  many  innocent  ones  will 
suffer  then  with  the  guilty;  but  what  else 
can  we  do?  We  are  living  above  a  seething 
volcano." 

Certainly,  though,  never  did  volcano  seethe 
more  quietly. 

The  garrison  commander  would  not  hear 
of  our  visiting  any  of  the  wrecked  Belgian 
fortresses  on  the  wooded  heights  behind  the 
city.  As  a  reason  for  his  refusal  he  said  that 
explosives  in  the  buried  magazines  were  be- 
ginning to  go  off,  making  it  highly  dangerous 
for  spectators  to  venture  near  them.  However, 
he  had  no  objection  to  our  going  to  a  certain 
specified  point  within  the  zone  of  supposed 
safety.  With  a  noncommissioned  officer  to 
guide  us  we  climbed  up  a  miry  footpath  to  the 
crest  of  a  low  hill;  and  from  a  distance  of 
perhaps  a  hundred  yards  we  looked  across  at 
what  was  left  of  Fort  Loncin,  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal defenses. 

I  am  wrong  there.  We  did  not  look  at 
[195] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


what  was  left  of  Fort  Loncin.  Literally 
nothing  was  left  of  it.  As  a  fort  it  was  gone, 
obliterated,  wiped  out,  vanished.  It  had  been 
of  a  triangular  shape.  It  was  of  no  shape  now. 
We  found  it  difficult  to  believe  that  the  work 
of  human  hands  had  wrought  destruction  so 
utter  and  overwhelming.  Where  masonry 
walls  had  been  was  a  vast  junk  heap;  where 
stout  magazines  had  been  bedded  down  in 
hard  concrete  was  a  crater;  where  strong  bar- 
racks had  stood  was  a  jumbled,  shuffled 
nothingness. 

Standing  there  on  the  shell-torn  hilltop, 
looking  across  to  where  the  Krupp  surprise 
wrote  its  own  testimonials  at  its  frst  time 
of  using,  in  characters  so  deadly  and  devas- 
tating, I  found  myself  somehow  thinking  of 
that  foolish  nursery  tale  wherein  it  is  recited 
that  a  pig  built  himself  a  house  of  straw,  and 
the  wolf  came;  and  he  huffed  and  he  puffed 
and  he  blew  the  house  down.  The  non- 
commissioned officer  told  us  an  unknown  num- 
ber of  the  defenders,  running  probably  into 
the  hundreds,  had  been  buried  so  deeplj^  be- 
neath the  ruins  of  the  fort  in  the  last  hours  of 
the  fighting  that  the  Germans  had  been  unable 
to  recover  the  bodies.  Even  as  he  spoke  a 
puff  of  wind  brought  to  our  nostrils  a  smell 
which,  once  a  man  gets  it  into  his  nose,  he 
will  never  get  the  memory  of  it  out  again  so 
long  as  he  has  a  nose.  Being  sufficiently  sick, 
we  departed  thence. 

[196] 


THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH 


As  we  rode  back,  and  had  got  as  far  as 
the  two  ruined  villages,  it  began  to  rain  very 
hard.  The  rain,  as  it  splashed  into  the  puddles, 
stippled  the  farther  reaches  of  the  road  thickly 
with  dots,  and  its  slanting  lines  turned  every- 
thing into  one  gray  etching  which  you  might 
have  labeled  Desolation!  And  you  would 
make  no  mistake  in  your  labeling.  Then — 
with  one  of  those  tricks  of  deliberate  drama 
by  which  Nature  sometimes  shames  stage 
managers — the  late  afternoon  sun  came  out 
just  after  we  crossed  the  frontier,  and  shone 
on  us;  and  on  the  dapper  young  officers  driving 
out  in  carriages;  and  on  the  peaceful  German 
country  places  with  their  formal  gardens;  and 
on  a  crate  of  fat  white  German  pigs  riding  to 
market  to  be  made  up  into  sausages  for  the 
placid  burghers  of  Aix-la-Chapelle. 


[197] 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THREE  GENERALS  AND  A  COOK 


TO  get  to  the  civic  midriff  of  the  ancient 
and  honorable  French  city  of  Laon  you 
must  ascend  a  road  that  winds  in  spi- 
rals about  a  high,  steep  hill,  like  threads 
cut  in  a  screw.  Doing  this  you  come  at  length 
to  the  flat  top  of  the  screw — a  most  curiously 
flat  top — and  find  on  this  side  of  you  the 
Cathedral  and  the  market-place,  and  on  that 
side  of  you  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  where  a  German 
flag  hangs  among  the  iron  lilies  in  the  grille- 
worked  arms  of  the  Republic  above  the  front 
doors.  Dead  ahead  of  you  is  the  Prefecture, 
which  is  a  noble  stone  building,  facing  south- 
ward toward  the  River  Aisne;  and  it  has 
decorations  of  the  twentieth  century,  a  gate- 
way of  the  thirteenth  century  and  plumbing 
of  the  third  century,  when  there  was  no  plumb- 
ing to  speak  of. 

We  had  made  this  journey  and  now  the  hour 
was  seven  in  the  evening,  and  we  were  dining 
[198] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

in  the  big  hall  of  the  Prefecture  as  the  guests 
of  His  Excellency,  Field  Marshal  von  Heerin- 
gen,  commanding  the  Seventh  Army  of  the 
German  Kaiser — dining,  I  might  add,  from 
fine  French  plates,  with  smart  German  orderlies 
for  waiters. 

Except  us  five,  and  one  other,  the  twenty-odd 
who  sat  about  the  great  oblong  table  were 
members  of  the  Over-General's  staff.  We  five 
were  Robert  J.  Thompson,  American  consul 
at  Aix-la-Chapelle;  McCutcheon  and  Bennett, 
of  the  Chicago  Tribune;  Captain  Alfred  Man- 
nesmann,  of  the  great  German  manufacturing 
firm  of  Mannesmann  Mulag;  and  myself. 
The  one  other  was  a  Berlin  artist,  by  name 
Follbehr,  who  having  the  run  of  the  army, 
was  going  out  daily  to  do  quick  studies  in 
water  colors  in  the  trenches  and  among  the 
batteries.  He  did  them  remarkably  well,  too, 
seeing  that  any  minute  a  shell  might  come  and 
spatter  him  all  over  his  own  drawing  board. 
All  the  rest,  though,  were  generals  and  colonels 
and  majors,  and  such — youngish  men  mostly. 
Excluding  our  host  I  do  not  believe  there  was 
a  man  present  who  had  passed  fifty  years  of 
age;  but  the  General  was  nearer  eighty  than 
fifty,  being  one  of  the  veterans  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  War,  whom  their  Emperor  had  ordered 
out  of  desk  jobs  in  the  first  days  of  August  to 
shepherd  his  forces  in  the  field.  At  his  call 
they  came — Von  Heeringen  and  Von  Hinden- 
berg  and  Von  Zwehl,  to  mention  three  names 
[1991 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


that  speedily  became  catchwords  round  the 
world — with  their  gray  heads  full  of  Prussian 
war  tactics;  and  very  soon  their  works  had 
justified  the  act  of  their  imperial  master  in 
choosing  them  for  leadership,  and  now  they 
had  new  medals  at  their  throats  and  on  their 
breasts  to  overlay  the  old  medals  they  won 
back  in  1870-71. 

Like  many  of  the  older  officers  of  the  German 
Army  I  met,  Von  Heeringen  spoke  no  English, 
in  which  regard  he  was  excessively  unlike 
ninety  per  cent  of  the  younger  officers.  Among 
them  it  was  an  uncommon  thing  in  my  ex- 
perience to  find  one  who  did  not  know  at  least 
a  smattering  of  English  and  considerably  more 
than  a  smattering  of  understandable  French. 
Even  that  marvelous  organism,  the  German 
private  soldier,  was  apt  to  astonish  you  at 
unexpected  moments  by  answering  in  fair- 
enough  English  the  questions  you  put  to  him 
in  fractured  and  dislocated  German. 

Not  once  or  twice,  but  a  hundred  times  dur- 
ing my  cruising  about  in  Belgium  and  Ger- 
many and  France,  I  laboriously  unloaded  a 
string  of  crippled  German  nouns  and  broken- 
legged  adjectives  and  unsocketed  verbs  on  a 
hickory-looking  sentry,  only  to  have  him  reply 
to  me  in  my  own  tongue.  It  would  come 
out  then  that  he  had  been  a  waiter  at  a  British 
seaside  resort  or  a  steward  on  a  Hamburg- 
American  liner;  or,  oftener  still,  that  he  had 
studied  English  at  the  public  schools  in  his 
[200] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

native  town  of  Kiel,  or  Coblenz,  or  Dresden, 
or  somewhere. 

The  officers'  English,  as  I  said  before,  was 
nearly  always  ready  and  lubricant.  To  one 
who  spoke  no  French  and  not  enough  German 
to  hurt  him,  this  proficiency  in  language  on 
the  part  of  the  German  standing  army  was 
a  precious  boon.  The  ordinary  double-barreled 
dictionary  of  phrases  had  already  disclosed 
itself  as  a  most  unsatisfying  volume  in  which 
to  put  one's  trust.  It  was  wearing  on  the 
disposition  to  turn  the  leaves  trying  to  find 
out  how  to  ask  somebody  to  pass  the  butter 
and  find  instead  whole  pages  of  parallel  col- 
umns of  translated  sentences  given  over  to 
such  questions  as  "Where  is  the  aunt  of  my 
stepfather's  second  cousin,-^" 

As  a  rule  a  man  does  not  go  to  Europe 
in  time  of  war  to  look  up  his  relatives  by  mar- 
riage. He  may  even  have  gone  there  to  avoid 
them.  War  is  terrible  enough  without  lugging 
in  all  the  remote  kinsfolk  a  fellow  has.  How 
much  easier,  then,  to  throw  oneself  on  the 
superior  educational  qualifications  of  the  Ger- 
man military  machine.  Somebody  was  sure 
to  have  a  linguistic  life  net  there,  rigged  and 
ready  for  you  to  drop  into. 

It  was  so  in  this  instance,  as  it  has  been  so 
in  many  instances  before  and  since.  The 
courteous  gentlemen  who  sat  at  my  right 
side  and  at  my  left  spoke  in  German  or  French 
or  English  as  the  occasion  suited,  while  old 
[201] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Von  Heeringen  boomed  away  in  rumbling 
German  phrases.     As  I  ate  I  studied  him. 

Three  weeks  later,  less  a  day,  I  met  by 
appointment  Lord  Kitchener  and  spent  forty 
minutes,  or  thereabouts,  in  his  company  at 
the  War  Office  in  London.  In  the  midst  of 
the  interview,  as  I  sat  facing  Kitchener  I 
began  wondering,  in  the  back  part  of  my  head, 
who  it  was  Lord  Kitchener  reminded  me  of. 
Suddenly  the  answer  came  to  me,  and  it  jolted 
me.    The  answer  was  Von  Heeringen. 

Physically  the  two  men — Kitchener  of  Khar- 
toum and  Von  Heeringen,  the  Gray  Ghost  of 
Metz — had  nothing  in  common;  mentally  I 
conceived  them  to  be  unlike.  Except  that 
both  of  them  held  the  rank  of  field  marshal,  I 
could  put  my  finger  dh  no  point  of  similarity, 
either  in  personality  or  in  record,  which  these 
men  shared  between  them.  It  is  true  they 
both  served  in  the  war  of  1870-71;  but  at  the 
outset  this  parallel  fell  flat,  too,  because  one 
had  been  a  junior  officer  on  the  German  side 
and  the  other  a  volunteer  on  the  French  side. 
One  was  a  Prussian  in  every  outward  aspect; 
the  other  was  as  British  as  it  is  possible  for  a 
Briton  to  be.  One  had  been  at  the  head  of 
the  general  staff  of  his  country,  and  was  now 
in  the  field  in  active  service  with  a  sword  at  his 
side.  The  other,  having  served  his  country 
in  the  field  for  many  years,  now  sat  intrenched 
behind  a  roll-top  desk,  directing  the  ma- 
chinery of  the  War  Office,  with  a  pencil  for  a 
[  202  ] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

baton.  Ivitchener  was  in  his  robust  sixties, 
with  a  breast  like  a  barrel;  Von  Heeringen 
was  in  his  shrinking,  drying-up  seventies,  and 
his  broad  shoulders  had  already  begun  to 
fold  in  on  his  ribs  and  his  big  black  eyes  to 
retreat  deeper  into  his  skull.  One  was  beaky- 
nosed,  hatchet-headed,  bearded;  the  other  was 
broad-faced  and  shaggily  mustached.  One 
had  been  famed  for  his  accessibility;  the  other 
for  his  inaccessibility. 

So,  because  of  these  acutely  dissimilar  things, 
I  marveled  to  myself  that  day  in  London  Vt^hy, 
when  I  looked  at  Kitchener,  I  should  think 
of  Von  Heeringen.  In  another  minute,  though, 
I  knew  why:  Both  men  radiated  the  same 
quality  of  masterfulness;  both  of  them  physi- 
cally typified  competency;  both  of  them  looked 
on  the  world  with  the  eyes  of  men  who  are 
born  to  have  power  and  to  hold  dominion  over 
lesser  men.  Put  either  of  these  two  in  the  rags 
of  a  beggar  or  the  motley  of  a  Pantaloon,  and 
at  a  glance  you  would  know  him  for  a  leader. 

Considering  that  we  were  supposed  to  be 
at  the  front  on  this  evening  at  Laon,  the  food 
was  good,  there  being  a  soup,  and  the  in- 
variable veal  on  which  a  German  buttresses  the 
solid  foundations  of  his  dinner,  a  salad  and  fruit, 
red  wine  and  white  wine  and  brandy.  Also, 
there  were  flies  amounting  in  numbers  to  a  great 
multitude.  The  talk,  like  the  flies,  went  to  and 
fro  about  the  table;  and  always  it  was  worth 
hearing,  since  it  dealt  largely  with  first-hand 
[2031 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


experiences  in  the  very  heart  of  the  fighting. 
Yet  I  must  add  that  not  all  the  talk  was  talk 
of  war.  In  peaceful  Aix-la-Chapelle,  whence 
we  had  come,  the  people  knew  but  one  topic. 
Here,  on  the  forward  frayed  edge  of  the  battle 
line,  the  men  w^ho  had  that  day  played  their 
part  in  battle  occasionally  spoke  of  other 
things.  I  recall  there  was  a  discussion  between 
Captain  von  Theobald,  of  the  Artillery,  and 
Major  Humplmayer,  of  the  Automobile  Corps, 
on  the  merits  of  a  painting  that  filled  one  of 
the  panels  in  the  big,  handsome,  overdecorated 
hall.  The  major  won,  v/hich  was  natural 
enough,  since,  in  time  of  peace,  he  was  by 
way  of  being  a  collector  of  and  dealer  in  art 
objects  at  Munich.  Somebody  else  mentioned 
big-game  shooting.  For  five  minutes,  then, 
or  such  a  matter,  the  ways  of  big  game  and 
the  ways  of  shooting  it  held  the  interest  of  half 
a  dozen  men  at  our  curve  of  the  table. 

In  such  an  interlude  as  this  the  listener 
might  almost  have  lulled  himself  into  the 
fancy  that,  after  all,  there  was  no  war;  that  these 
courteous,  gray-coated,  shoulder-strapped  gen- 
tlemen were  not  at  present  engaged  in  the 
business  of  killing  their  fellowmen;  that  this 
building  wherein  we  sat,  with  its  florid  velvet 
carpets  underfoot  and  its  too-heavy  chandeliers 
overhead,  was  not  the  captured  chateau  of  the 
governor  of  a  French  province;  and  that  the 
deep-eyed,  white-fleeced,  bull- voiced  old  man 
who  sat  just  opposite  was  not  the  commander 
[204] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

of  sundry  hundreds  of  thousands  of  fighting 
men  with  guns  in  their  hands,  but  surely  was 
no  more  and  no  less  than  the  elderly  lord  of  the 
manor,  who,  having  a  fancy  for  regimentals, 
had  put  on  his  and  had  pinned  some  glittering 
baubles  on  his  coat  and  then  had  invited  a 
few  of  his  friends  and  neighbors  in  for  a  simple 
dinner  on  this  fine  evening  of  the  young 
autumn. 

Yet  we  knew  that  already  the  war  had 
taken  toll  of  nearly  every  man  in  uniform 
who  was  present  about  this  board.  General 
von  Heeringen's  two  sons,  both  desperately 
wounded,  were  lying  in  field  hospitals — one 
in  East  Prussia,  the  other  in  northern  France 
not  many  miles  from  where  we  were.  His 
second  in  command  had  two  sons — his  only 
two  sons — killed  in  the  same  battle  three 
weeks  before.  When,  a  few  minutes  earlier, 
I  had  heard  this  I  stared  at  him,  curious  to 
see  what  marks  so  hard  a  stroke  would  leave 
on  a  man.  I  saw  only  a  grave  middle-aged 
gentleman,  very  attentive  to  the  consul  who 
sat  beside  him,  and  very  polite  to  us  all 

Prince  Scharmberg-Lippe,  whom  we  had 
passed  driving  away  from  the  Prefecture  in 
his  automobile  as  we  drove  to  it  in  ours,  was 
the  last  of  four  brothers.  The  other  three 
were  killed  in  the  first  six  weeks  of  fighting. 
Our  own  companion,  Captain  Mannesmann, 
heard  only  the  day  before,  when  we  stopped 
at  Hirson — just  over  the  border  from  Bel- 
[205] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


gium — that  his  cousin  had  won  the  Iron  Cross 
for  conspicuous  courage,  and  within  three 
days  more  was  to  hear  that  this  same  cousin 
had  been  sniped  from  ambush  during  a  night 
raid  down  the  left  wing. 

Nor  had  death  been  overly  stingy  to  the 
members  of  the  Staff  itself.  We  gathered  as 
much  from  chance  remarks.  And  so,  as  it 
came  to  be  eight  o'clock,  I  caught  myself 
watching  certain  vacant  chairs  at  our  table 
and  at  the  two  smaller  tables  in  the  next  room 
with  a  strained  curiosity. 

One  by  one  the  vacant  chairs  filled  up.  At 
intervals  the  door  behind  me  would  open  and 
an  officer  would  clank  in,  dusted  over  with 
the  sift  of  the  French  roads.  He  would  bow 
ceremoniously  to  his  chief  and  then  to  the  com- 
pany generally,  slip  into  an  unoccupied  chair, 
give  an  order  over  his  shoulder  to  a  soldier- 
waiter,  and  at  once  begin  to  eat  his  dinner 
with  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  earned  it. 
After  a  while  there  was  but  one  place  vacant 
at  our  table;  it  was  next  to  me.  I  could  not 
keep  my  eyes  away  from  it.  It  got  on  my 
nerves — that  little  gap  in  the  circle;  that  little 
space  of  white  linen,  bare  of  anything  but  two 
unfilled  glasses.  To  me  it  became  as  porten- 
tous as  an  unscrewed  coffin  lid.  No  one  else 
seemed  to  notice  it.  Cigars  had  been  passed 
round  and  the  talk  eddied  casually  back  and 
forth  with  the  twisty  smoke  wreaths. 

An  orderly  drew  the  empty  chair  back  with 
[2061 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

a  thump,  I  think  I  jumped.  A  slender  man, 
whose  uniform  fitted  him  as  though  it  had 
been  his  skin,  was  sitting  down  beside  me. 
Unlike  those  who  came  before  him,  he  had 
entered  so  quietly  that  I  had  not  sensed  his 
coming.  I  heard  the  soldier  call  him  Excel- 
lency; and  I  heard  him  tell  the  soldier  not  to 
give  him  any  soup.  We  swapped  common- 
places, I  telling  him  what  my  business  there 
was;  and  for  a  little  v/hile  he  plied  his  knife 
and  fork  busily,  making  the  heavy  gold  curb 
chain  on  his  left  wrist  tinkle  musically. 

"I'm  rather  glad  they  did  not  get  me  this 
afternoon,"  he  said  as  though  to  make  con- 
versation with  a  stranger.  "This  is  first-rate 
veal — better  than  we  usually  have  here." 

"Get  you.^"  I  said.  "Who  wanted  to  get 
you.'' 

"Our  friends,  the  enemy,"  he  answered. 
"I  was  in  one  of  our  trenches  rather  well  toward 
the  front,  and  a  shell  or  two  struck  just  behind 
me.  I  think,  from  their  sound,  they  were 
French  shells." 

This  debonair  gentleman,  as  presently  trans- 
pired, was  Colonel  von  Scheller,  for  four  years 
consul  to  the  German  Embassy  at  Washington, 
more  lately  minister  for  foreign  affairs  of  the 
kingdom  of  Saxony,  and  nov/  doing  staff  duty 
in  the  ordnance  department  here  at  the  Ger- 
man center.  He  had  the  sharp  brown  eyes 
of  a  courageous  fox  terrier,  a  mustache  that 
turned  up  at  the  ends,  and  a  most  beautiful 
1207] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


command  of  the  English  language  and  its 
American  idioms.  He  hurried  along  with  his 
dinner  and  soon  he  had  caught  up  with  us. 

"I  suggest,"  he  said,  "that  we  go  out  on 
the  terrace  to  drink  our  coffee.  It  is  about 
time  for  the  French  to  start  their  evening 
benediction,  as  we  call  it.  They  usually  quit 
firing  their  heavy  guns  just  before  dark,  and 
usually  begin  again  at  eight  and  keep  it  up 
for  an  hour  or  two." 

So  we  tvro  took  our  coffee  cups  and  our  cigars 
in  our  hands  and  went  out  through  a  side 
passage  to  the  terrace,  and  sat  on  a  little  iron 
bench,  where  a  shaft  of  light,  from  a  window 
of  the  room  we  had  just  quit,  showed  a  narrow 
streak  of  flowering  plants  beyond  the  bricked 
wall  and  a  clump  of  red  and  yellow  woodbine 
on  a  low  wall. 

The  rest  lay  in  blackness;  but  I  knew,  from 
what  I  had  seen  before  dusk  came,  that  we 
must  be  somewhere  near  the  middle  of  a  broad 
terrace — a  hanging  garden  rather — full  of  sun- 
dials  and  statues  and  flower  beds,  which  over- 
hung the  southern  face  of  the  Hill  of  Laon, 
and  from  which,  in  daylight,  a  splendid  view 
might  be  had  of  wooded  slopes  falling  a^ray 
into  wide,  flat  valleys,  and  wide,  flat  valleys 
rising  again  to  form  more  wooded  slopes.  I 
knew,  too,  from  what  I  remembered,  that  the 
plateau  immediately  beneath  us  was  flyspecked 
with  the  roofs  of  small  abandoned  villages; 
and  that  the  road  which  ran  straight  from  the 
[2081 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

base  of  the  heights  toward  the  remote  river 
was  a-crawl  with  supply  wagons  and  ammuni- 
tion wagons  going  forward  to  the  German 
batteries,  seven  miles  away,  and  with  scouts 
and  messengers  in  automobiles  and  on  motor 
cycles,  and  the  day's  toll  of  wounded  in  ambu- 
lances coming  back  from  the  front. 

We  could  not  see  them  when  we  went  to 
the  parapet  and  looked  downward  into  the 
black  gulf  below,  but  the  rumbling  of  the 
wheels  and  the  panting  of  the  motors  came  up 
to  us.  With  these  came,  also,  the  remote 
music  of  those  queer  little  trumpets  carried 
by  the  soldiers  who  ride  beside  the  drivers  of 
German  military  automobiles ;  and  this  sounded 
as  thinly  and  plaintively  to  our  ears  as  the  cries 
of  sandpipers  heard  a  long  way  off  across  a 
windy  beach. 

We  could  hear  something  else  too:  the 
evening  benediction  had  started.  Now  fast, 
now  slow,  like  the  beating  of  a  feverish  pulse, 
the  guns  sounded  in  faint  throbs;  and  all  along 
the  horizon  from  southeast  to  southwest,  and 
back  again,  ran  flares  and  waves  of  a  sullen 
red  radiance.  The  light  flamed  high  at  one 
instant — like  fireworks — and  at  the  next  it 
died  almost  to  a  glow,  as  though  a  great  bed 
of  peat  coals  or  a  vast  limekiln  lay  on  the 
farthermost  crest  of  the  next  chain  of  hills. 
It  was  the  first  time  I  had  ever  seen  artillery 
fire  at  night,  though  I  had  heard  it  often 
enough  by  then  in  France  and  in  Belgium,  and 
[2091 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


even  in  Germany;  for  when  the  wind  blew  out 
of  the  west  we  could  hear  in  Aix-la-Chapelle 
the  faint  booming  of  the  great  cannons  before 
Antwerp,  days  and  nights  on  end. 

I  do  not  know  how  long  I  stood  and  looked 
and  listened.  Eventually  I  was  aware  that  the 
courteous  Von  Scheller,  standing  at  my  elbow, 
was  repeating  something  he  had  already  stated 
at  least  once. 

"Those  brighter  flashes  you  see,  apparently 
coming  from  below  the  other  lights,  are  our 
guns,"  he  was  saying.  "They  seem  to  be  below 
the  others  because  they  are  nearer  to  us. 
Personally  I  don't  think  these  evening  volleys 
do  very  much  damage,"  he  went  on  as  though 
vaguely  regretful  that  the  dole  of  death  by 
night  should  be  so  scanty,  "because  it  is  im- 
possible for  the  men  in  the  outermost  observa- 
tion pits  to  see  the  effect  of  the  shots;  but  we 
answer,  as  you  notice,  just  to  show  the  French 
and  English  we  are  not  asleep." 

Those  iron  vespers  lasted,  I  should  say, 
for  the  better  part  of  an  hour.  When  they  were 
ended  we  went  indoors.  Everybody  was  as- 
sembled in  the  long  hall  of  the  Prefecture, 
and  a  young  officer  was  smashing  out  marching 
songs  on  the  piano.  The  Berlin  artist  made 
an  art  gallery  of  the  billiard  table  and  was 
exhibiting  the  water-color  sketches  he  had 
done  that  day — all  very  dashing  and  spirited 
in  their  treatment,  though  a  bit  splashy  and 
scrambled-eggish  as  to  the  use  of  the  pigments 
[2101 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

A  very  young  man,  with  the  markings  of  a 
captain  on  shoulder  and  collar,  came  in  and 
went  up  to  General  von  Heeringen  and  showed 
him  something — something  that  looked  like  a 
very  large  and  rather  ornamental  steel  coal 
scuttle  which  had  suffered  from  a  serious  per- 
sonal misunderstanding  with  an  ax.  The 
elongated  top  of  it,  which  had  a  fluted,  rudder- 
like adornment,  made  you  think  of  Siegfried's 
helmet  in  the  opera;  but  the  bottom,  which 
was  squashed  out  of  shape,  made  you  think 
of  a  total  loss. 

When  the  general  had  finished  looking  at 
this  object  we  all  had  a  chance  to  finger  it. 
The  young  captain  seemed  quite  proud  of  it 
and  bore  it  off  with  him  to  the  dining  room. 
It  was  what  remained  of  a  bomb,  and  had  been 
loaded  with  slugs  of  lead  and  those  iron  cherries 
that  are  called  shrapnel.  A  French  flyer  had 
dropped  it  that  afternoon  with  intent  to  de- 
stroy one  of  the  German  captive  balloons  and 
its  operator.  The  young  officer  was  the  oper- 
ator of  the  balloon  in  question.  It  was  his 
daily  duty  to  go  aloft,  at  the  end  of  a  steel 
tether,  and  bob  about  for  seven  hours  at  a 
stretch,  studying  the  effects  of  the  shell  fire 
and  telephoning  down  directions  for  the  proper 
aiming  of  the  guns.  He  had  been  up  seven 
hundred  feet  in  the  air  that  afternoon,  with 
no  place  to  go  in  case  of  accident,  when  the 
Frenchman  came  over  and  tried  to  hit  him. 

"It  struck  within  a  hundred  meters  of  me,'* 
[211] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


called  back  the  young  captain  as  he  disappeared 
through  the  dining-room  doorway.  "Made 
quite  a  noise  and  tore  up  the  earth  consider- 
ably." 

"He  was  lucky — the  young  Herr  Captain," 
said  Von  Scheller — "luckier  than  his  prede- 
cessor. A  fortnight  ago  one  of  the  enemy's 
flyers  struck  one  of  our  balloons  with  a  bomb 
and  the  gas  envelope  exploded.  When  the 
wreckage  reached  the  earth  there  was  nothing 
much  left  of  the  operator — poor  fellow! — 
except  the  melted  buttons  on  his  coat.  There 
are  very  few  safe  jobs  in  this  army,  but  being 
a  captive-balloon  observer  is  one  of  the  least 
safe  of  them  all." 

I  had  noted  that  the  young  captain  wore 
in  the  second  buttonhole  of  his  tunic  the  black- 
and-white-striped  ribbon  and  the  black-and- 
white  Maltese  Cross;  and  now  when  I  looked 
about  me  I  saw  that  at  least  every  third  man 
of  the  present  company  likewise  bore  such  a 
decoration.  I  knew  the  Iron  Cross  supposedly 
was  given  to  a  man  for  gallant  conduct  in  time 
of  war  at  the  peril  of  his  life. 

A  desire  to  know  a  few  details  beset  me. 
Humplmayer,  the  scholarly  art  dealer,  was  at 
my  side.  He  had  it  too — the  Iron  Cross  of 
the  first  class. 

"You  won  that  lately?"  I  began,  touching 
the  ribbon. 

"Yes,"  he  said;  "only  the  other  day  I  re- 
ceived it." 

[2121 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

"And  for  what,  might  I  ask?"  said  I,  pressing 
my  advantage. 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "I've  been  out  quite  a  bit 
in  the  night  air  lately.  You  know  we  Germans 
are  desperately  afraid  of  night  air." 

Later  I  learned — though  not  from  Humpl- 
mayer — that  he  had  for  a  period  of  weeks 
done  scout  work  in  an  automobile  in  hostile 
territory;  which  meant  that  he  rode  in  the 
darkness  over  the  strange  roads  of  an  alien 
country,  exposed  every  minute  to  the  chances 
of  ambuscade  and  barbed-wire  mantraps  and 
the  like.    I  judge  he  earned  his  bauble. 

I  tried  Von  Theobald  next — a  lynx-faced, 
square-shouldered  young  man  of  the  field  guns. 
To  him  I  put  the  question:  "What  have  you 
done,  now,  to  merit  the  bestowal  of  the  Cross.?" 

"Well,"  he  said — and  his  smile  was  born  of 
embarrassment,  I  thought — "there  was  shoot- 
ing once  or  twice,  and  I — well,  I  did  not  go 
away.     I  remained." 

So  after  that  I  quit  asking.  But  it  was 
borne  in  upon  ine  that  if  these  gold-braceletted, 
monocled,  wasp-waisted  exquisites  could  go 
jauntily  forth  for  flirtations  with  death  then 
also  they  could  be  excessively  modest  touching 
on  their  own  performances  in  the  event  of  their 
surviving  those  most  fatal  blandishments. 
They  boasted  of  their  cause,  not  of  themselves. 

Pretty  soon  we  told  the  Staff  good  night, 
according  to  the  ritualistic  Teutonic  fashion, 
and  took  ourselves  off  to  bed;  for  the  next 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


day  was  expected  to  be  a  full  day,  which  it 
was  indeed  and  verily.  In  the  hotels  of  the 
town,  such  as  they  were,  officers  were  billeted, 
four  to  the  room  and  two  to  the  bed;  but  the 
commandant  enthroned  at  the  Hotel  de  Ville 
looked  after  our  comfort.  He  sent  a  soldier 
to  nail  a  notice  on  the  gate  of  one  of  the  hand- 
somest houses  in  Laon — a  house  whence  the 
tenants  had  fled  at  the  coming  of  the  Germans 
— which  notice  gave  warning  to  all  whom  it 
might  concern  that  Captain  Mannesmann, 
who  carried  the  Kaiser's  own  pass,  and  four 
American  Herren  were,  until  further  orders, 
domiciled  there.  And  the  soldier  tarried  to 
clean  our  boots  while  we  slept  and  bring  us 
warm  shaving  water  in  the  morning. 

Being  thus  provided  for  vv'e  tramped  away 
through  the  empty  winding  streets  to  Number 
Five,  Rue  St.  Cyr,  which  Vv-as  a  big,  fine 
three-story  mansion  with  its  ovv^n  garden  and 
courtyard.  Arriving  there  we  drew  lots  for 
bedrooms.  It  fell  to  me  to  occupy  one  that 
evidently  belonged  to  the  master  of  the  house. 
He  must  have  run  away  in  a  hurry.  His  bath- 
robe still  hung  on  a  peg;  his  other  pair  of  sus- 
penders dangled  over  the  footboard;  and  his 
shaving  brush,  with  dried  lather  on  it,  was  on 
the  floor.  I  stepped  on  it  as  I  got  into  bed 
and  hurt  my  foot. 

Goodness  knows  I  was  tired  enough,  but  I 
lay  awake  a  while  thinking  what  changes  in 
our  journalistic  fortunes  thirty  days  had 
[2141 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

brought  us.  Five  weeks  before,  bearing  dan- 
gerously dubious  credentials,  we  had  trailed 
afoot — a  suspicious  squad — at  the  tail  of  the 
German  columns,  liable  to  be  halted  and 
locked  up  any  minute  by  any  fingerling  of  a 
sublieutenant  who  might  be  so  minded  to  so 
serve  us.  In  that  stressful  time  a  war  cor- 
respondent was  almost  as  popular,  with  the 
officialdom  of  the  German  army,  as  the  Asiatic 
cholera  would  have  been.  The  privates  were 
our  best  friends  then.  Just  one  month,  to 
the  hour  and  the  night,  after  we  slept  on 
straw  as  quasi-prisoners  and  under  an  armed 
guard  in  a  schoolhouse  belonging  to  the  Prince 
de  Caraman-Chimay,  at  Beaumont,  v/e  dined 
with  the  commandant  of  a  German  garrison 
in  the  castle  of  another  prince  of  the  same 
name — the  Prince  de  Chimay — at  the  town  of 
Chimay,  set  among  the  timbered  preserves  of 
the  ancient  house  of  Chimay.  In  Belgium, 
at  the  end  of  August,  we  fended  and  foraged 
for  ourselves  aboard  a  train  of  wounded  and 
prisoners.  In  northern  France,  at  the  end  of 
September,  Prince  Reuss,  German  minister  to 
Persia,  but  serving  temporarily  in  the  Red  Cross 
Corps,  had  bestirred  himself  to  find  lodgings 
for  us.  And  now,  thanks  to  a  newborn  desire 
on  the  part  of  the  Berlin  War  Office  to  let  the 
press  of  America  know  something  of  the  effects 
of  their  operations  on  the  people  of  the  invaded 
states,  here  we  were,  making  free  with  a 
strange  French  gentleman's  chateau  and  mess- 
[2151 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


ing  with  an  Over-General's  Staff.  Lying  there, 
in  another  man's  bed,  I  felt  like  a  burglar  and 
I  slept  like  an  oyster — the  oyster  being,  as  nat- 
uralists know,  a  most  sound  sleeper. 

In  the  morning  there  was  breakfast  at  the 
great  table — the  flies  of  the  night  before  being 
still  present — with  General  von  Heeringen 
inquiring  most  earnestly  as  to  how  we  had 
rested,  and  then  going  out  to  see  to  the  day's 
killing.  Before  doing  so,  however,  he  detailed 
the  competent  Captain  von  Theobald  and  the 
efficient  Lieutenant  Giebel  to  serve  for  the 
day  as  our  guides  while  we  studied  briefly  the 
workings  of  the  German  war  machine  in  the 
actual  theater  of  war. 

It  was  under  their  conductorship  that  about 
roon  we  aimed  our  automobiles  for  the  spot 
where,  in  accordance  with  provisions  worked 
out  in  advance,  but  until  that  moment  un- 
known to  us,  we  were  to  lunch  with  another 
general — Von  Zwehl,  of  the  reserves.  We  left 
the  hill,  where  the  town  was,  some  four  miles 
behind  us,  and  when  we  had  passed  through 
two  WTCcked  and  silent  villages  and  through 
three  of  those  strips  of  park  timber  which 
Continentals  call  forests,  we  presently  drew 
up  and  halted  and  dismounted  where  a  thick 
fringe  of  undergrowth,  following  the  line  of 
an  old  and  straggly  thorn  hedge,  met  the  road 
at  right  angles  on  the  comb  of  a  small  ridge 
commanding  a  view  of  the  tablelands  to  the 
southward 

[2161 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

As  we  climbed  up  the  banks  we  were  aware 
of  certain  shelters  which  were  like  overgrown 
rabbit  hutches  cunningly  contrived  of  wattled 
faggots  and  straw  sheaves  plaited  together. 
They  had  tarpaulin  interlinings  and  dug-out 
earthen  floors  covered  over  thickly  with  straw. 
These  cozy  small  shacks  hid  themselves  behind 
a  screen  of  haws  among  the  scattered  trees 
which  flanked  an  ancient  fortification,  aban- 
doned many  years  before,  I  judged,  by  the 
grass-grown  looks  of  it.  Out  in  front,  upon 
the  open  crest  of  the  rise,  staff  officers  were 
grouped  about  two  telescopes  mounted  on 
tripods.  An  old  man — you  could  tell  by  the 
hunch  of  his  shoulders  he  was  old — sat  on  a 
camp  chair  with  his  back  to  us  and  his  face 
against  the  barrels  of  one  of  the  telescopes. 
With  his  long  dust-colored  coat  and  the  lacings 
of  violent  scarlet  upon  his  cap  and  his  upturned 
collar  he  made  you  think  of  one  of  those  big 
gray  African  parrots  that  talk  so  fluently  and 
bite  so  viciously.  But  when,  getting  nimbly 
up,  he  turned  to  greet  us  and  be  introduced 
the  resemblance  vanished.  There  was  nothing 
of  the  parrot  about  him  now.  Here  was  a  man 
part  watch  dog  and  part  hawk.  His  cheeks  and 
the  flanges  of  his  nostrils  were  thickly  hair- 
lined  with  those  little  red-and-blue  veins  that 
are  to  be  found  in  the  texture  of  good  Amer- 
ican paper  currency  and  in  the  faces  of  elderly 
men  who  have  lived  much  out-of-doors  during 
their  lives.  His  jowls  were  heavy  and  pen- 
[2171 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


diilous  like  a  mastiff's.  His  frontal  bone  came 
down  low  and  straight  so  that  under  the  flat 
arch  of  the  brow  his  small,  very  bright  agate- 
blue  eyes  looked  out  as  from  beneath  half- 
closed  shutters.  His  hair  was  clipped  close  to 
his  scalp  and  the  shape  of  his  skull  showed, 
rounded  and  bulgy;  not  the  skull  of  a  thinker, 
nor  yet  the  skull  of  a  creator,  just  the  skull 
of  a  natural-born  fighting  man.  The  big, 
ridgy  veins  in  the  back  of  his  neck  stood  out 
like  window-cords  from  a  close  smocking  of 
fine  wrinkles.  The  neck  itself  was  tanned 
to  a  brickdust  red.  A  gnawed  v/hite  mustache 
bristled  on  his  upper  lip.  He  was  tall  without 
seeming  to  be  tall  and  broad  without  appearing 
broad,  and  he  was  old  enough  for  a  grand- 
father and  spry  enough  for  his  own  grandchild. 
You  know  the  type.  Our  Civil  War  produced 
it  in  number. 

At  his  throat  was  the  blue  star  of  the  Order 
of  Merit,  the  very  highest  honor  a  German 
soldier  can  win,  and  below  it  on  his  breast 
the  inevitable  black-and-white  striped  ribbon. 
The  one  meant  leadership  and  the  other  testi- 
fied to  individual  valor  in  the  teeth  of  danger. 
It  was  Excellency  von  Zwehl,  commander  of 
the  Seventh  Reserve  Corps  of  the  Western 
Army,  the  man  who  took  Maubeuge  from  the 
French  and  English,  and  the  man  who  in  the 
same  week  held  the  imperiled  German  center 
against  the  French  and  English. 

We  lunched  with  the  General  and  his  staff 
[218] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

on  soup  and  sausages,  with  a  rare  and  precious 
Belgian  melon  cut  in  thin,  salmon-tinted 
crescents  to  follow  for  dessert.  But  before  the 
lunch  he  took  us  and  showed  us,  pointing  this 
way  and  that  with  his  little  riding  whip,  the 
theater  wherein  he  had  done  a  thing  which  he 
valued  more  than  the  taking  of  a  walled  city. 
Indeed  there  was  a  certain  elemental  boylike 
bearing  of  pride  in  him  as  he  told  us  the  story. 
If  I  am  right  in  my  dates  the  defenses  of 
Maubeuge  caved  in  under  the  batterings  of 
the  German  Jack  Johnsons  on  September 
sixth  and  the  citadel  surrendered  September 
seventh.  On  the  following  day,  the  eighth.  Von 
Zwehl  got  word  that  a  sudden  forward  thrust 
of  the  Allies  threatened  the  German  center  at 
Laon.  Without  waiting  for  orders  he  started  to 
the  relief.  He  had  available  only  nine  thousand 
troops,  all  reserves.  As  many  more  shortly  re- 
enforced  him.  He  marched  this  small  army — 
small,  that  is,  as  armies  go  these  Titan  times — for 
four  days  and  three  nights.  In  the  last  twenty- 
four  hours  of  marching  the  eighteen  thousand 
covered  more  than  forty  English  miles— in  the 
rain.  They  came  on  this  same  plateau,  the 
one  which  we  now  faced,  at  six  o'clock  of  the 
morning  of  September  thirteenth,  and  within 
an  hour  were  engaged  against  double  or  triple 
their  number.  Von  Zwehl  held  off  the  enemy 
until  a  strengthening  force  reached  him,  and 
then  for  three  days,  with  his  face  to  the  river 
and  his  back  to  the  hill,  he  fought.  Out  of  a 
[219] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


total  force  of  forty  thousand  men  lie  lost  eight 
thousand  and  more  in  killed  and  wounded, 
but  he  saved  the  German  Army  from  being 
split  asunder  between  its  shoulder-blades.  The 
enemy  in  proportion  lost  even  more  than  he 
did,  he  thought.  The  General  had  no  English; 
he  told  us  all  this  in  German,  Von  Theobald 
standing  handily  by  to  translate  for  him  when 
our  own  scanty  acquaintance  with  the  lan- 
guage left  us  puzzled. 

"We  punished  them  well  and  they  punished 
us  well,"  he  added.  "We  captured  a  group 
of  thirty-one  Scotchmen — all  who  were  left 
out  of  a  battalion  of  six  hundred  and  fifty, 
and  there  was  no  commissioned  ofiicer  left  of 
that  battalion.  A  sergeant  surrendered  them 
to  my  men.  They  fight  very  well  against  us — 
the  Scotch." 

Since  then  the  groundswell  of  battle  had 
swept  forward,  then  backward,  until  now,  as 
chance  would  have  it,  General  von  Zwehl  once 
more  had  his  headquarters  on  the  identical 
spot  where  he  had  them  four  weeks  before 
during  his  struggle  to  keep  the  German  center 
from  being  pierced.  Then  it  had  been  mainly 
infantry  fighting  at  close  range;  now  it  was 
the  labored  pounding  of  heavy  guns,  the 
pushing  ahead  of  trench-work  preparatory  to 
another  pitched  battle. 

Considering  what  had  taken  place  here 
less  than  a  month  before  the  plain  imme- 
diately before  us  seemed  peaceful  enough. 
1220] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

Nature  certainly  works  mighty  fast  to  cover 
up  what  man  at  war  does.  True,  the  yellow- 
green  meadowlands  ahead  of  us  were  scuffed 
and  scored  minutely  as  though  a  myriad  swine 
had  rooted  there  for  mast.  The  gouges  of 
wheels  and  feet  were  at  the  roadside.  Under 
the  broken  hedge-rows  you  saw  a  littering  of 
weather-beaten  French  knapsacks  and  mired 
uniform  coats,  but  that  was  all.  New  grass 
was  springing  up  in  the  hoof  tracks,  and  in  a 
pecking,  puny  sort  of  way  an  effort  was  being 
made  by  certain  French  peasants  within  sight 
to  get  back  to  work  in  their  wasted  truck 
patches.  Near  at  hand  I  counted  three  men 
and  an  old  woman  in  the  fields,  bent  over 
like  worms.  On  the  crest  above  them  stood 
this  gray  veteran  of  two  invasions  of  their 
land,  aiming  with  his  riding  whip.  The  whip, 
I  believe,  signifies  dominion,  and  sometimes 
brute  force. 

Beyond  the  tableland,  and  along  the  suc- 
cession of  gentle  elevations  which  ringed  it  in 
to  the  south,  the  pounding  of  the  field  pieces 
went  steadily  on,  while  Von  Zwehl  lectured  to 
us  upon  the  congenial  subject  of  what  he  here 
^  had  done.  Out  yonder  a  matter  of  three  or 
four  English  miles  from  us  the  big  ones  were 
busy  for  a  fact.  We  could  see  the  smoke  clouds 
of  each  descending  shell  and  the  dust  clouds  of 
the  explosion,  and  of  course  we  could  hear  it. 
It  never  stopped  for  an  instant,  never  abated 
for  so  much  as  a  minute.  It  had  been  going 
[221] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


on  this  way  for  weeks;  it  would  surely  go  on 
this  way  for  weeks  yet  to  come.  But  so  far 
as  we  could  discern  the  General  paid  it  no 
heed — he  nor  any  of  his  staff.  It  was  his  busi- 
ness, but  seemingly  the  business  went  well. 

It  was  late  that  afternoon  when  we  met  our 
third  general,  and  this  meeting  was  quite  by 
chance.  Coming  back  from  a  spin  down  the 
lines  we  stopped  in  a  small  village  called 
Amifontaine,  to  let  our  chauffeur,  known  affec- 
tionately as  The  Human  Rabbit,  tinker  with 
a  leaky  tire  valve  or  something.  A  young 
oflScer  came  up  through  the  dusk  to  find  out 
who  we  were,  and,  having  found  out,  he  in- 
vited us  into  the  chief  house  of  the  place, 
and  there  in  a  stuffy  little  French  parlor  we 
were  introduced  in  due  form  to  General  d'Elsa, 
the  head  of  the  Twelfth  Reserve  Corps,  it 
turned  out.  Standing  in  a  ceremonious  ring, 
with  filled  glasses  in  our  hands,  about  a  table 
which  bore  a  flary  lamp  and  a  bottle  of  bad 
native  wine,  we  toasted  him  and  he  toasted  us. 

He  was  younger  by  ten  years,  I  should  say, 
than  either  Von  Heeringen  or  Von  Zwehl;  too 
young,  I  judged,  to  have  got  his  training  in 
the  blood-and-iron  school  of  Bismarck  and 
Von  Moltke  of  which  the  other  two  'must 
have  been  brag-scholars.  Both  of  them,  I 
think,  were  Prussians,  but  this  general  was  a 
Saxon  from  the  South.  Indeed,  as  I  now  re- 
call, he  said  his  home  in  peace  times  was  in 
Dresden.  He  seemed  less  simple  of  manner 
[222] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

than  they;  they  in  turn  lacked  a  certain  flexi- 
bihty  and  grace  of  bearing  which  were  his. 
But  two  things  in  common  they  all  three  had 
and  radiated  from  them — a  superb  efficiency 
in  the  trade  at  which  they  worked  and  a 
superb  confidence  in  the  tools  with  which  they 
did  the  work.  This  was  rather  a  small  man, 
quick  and  supple  in  his  movements.  He  had 
a  limited  command  of  English,  and  he  appeared 
deeply  desirous  that  v/e  Americans  should  have 
a  good  opinion  of  the  behavior  of  his  troops 
and  that  v/e  should  say  as  much  in  what  we 
wrote  for  our  fellow  Americans  to  read. 

Coming  out  of  the  house  to  reenter  our 
automobile  I  saw,  across  the  small  square  of 
the  town,  which  by  now  was  quite  in  dark- 
ness, the  flare  of  a  camp  kitchen.  I  wanted 
very  much  to  examine  one  of  these  w^heeled 
cook  wagons  at  close  range.  An  officer — the 
same  who  had  first  approached  us  to  examine 
our  papers — accompanied  me  to  explain  its 
workings  and  to  point  out  the  various  com- 
partments where  the  coal  was  kept  and  the 
fuel,  and  the  two  big  sunken  pots  where  the 
stew  was  cooked  and  the  coffee  was  brewed. 
The  thing  proved  to  be  cumbersome,  which 
{ was  German,  but  it  was  most  complete  in 
detail,  and  that,  take  it,  was  German  too. 
While  the  officer  rattled  the  steel  lids  the 
cook  himself  stood  rigidly  alongside,  with  his 
fingers  touching  the  seams  of  his  trousers. 
Seen  by  the  glare  of  his  own  fire  he  seemed 
[  223  ] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


a  clod,  fit  only  to  make  soups  and  feed  a  fire 
box.  But  by  that  same  flickery  light  I  saw 
something.  On  the  breast  of  his  grease- 
spattered  blouse  dangled  a  black-and-white 
ribbon  with  a  black-and-white  Maltese  cross 
fastened  to  it.  I  marveled  that  a  company 
cook  should  wear  the  Iron  Cross  of  the  second 
class  and  I  asked  the  captain  about  it.  He 
laughed  at  the  wonder  that  was  evident  in  my 
tones. 

"If  you  will  look  more  closely,"  he  said, 
*'you  will  see  that  a  good  many  of  our  cooks 
already  have  won  the  Iron  Cross  since  this 
war  began,  and  a  good  many  others  will  yet 
win  it — if  they  live.  We  have  no  braver  men 
in  our  army  than  these  fellov/s.  They  go  into 
the  trenches  at  least  twice  a  day,  under  the 
hottest  fire  sometimes,  to  carry  hot  coffee  and 
hot  food  to  the  soldiers  who  fight.  A  good 
many  of  them  have  already  been  killed. 

"Only  the  other  day — at  La  Fere  I  think 
it  was— two  of  our  cooks  at  daybreak  went 
so  far  forward  with  their  wagon  that  they  were 
almost  inside  the  enemy's  lines.  Sixteen  be- 
wildered Frenchmen  who  had  got  separated 
from  their  company  came  straggling  through 
a  little  forest  and  walked  right  into  them. 
The  Frenchmen  thought  the  cook  wagon  with 
its  short  smoke  funnel  and  its  steel  fire  box 
was  a  new  kind  of  machine  gun,  and  they  threw 
down  their  guns  and  surrendered.  The  two 
cooks  brought  their  sixteen  orisoners  back  to 
[224] 


THREE    GENERALS    AND    A    COOK 

our  lines  too,  but  first  one  of  them  stood  guard 
over  the  Frenchmen  while  the  other  carried 
the  breakfast  coffee  to  the  men  who  had  been 
all  night  in  the  trenches.  They  are  good  men, 
those  cooks!" 

So  at  last  I  found  out  at  second  hand  what 
one  German  soldier  had  done  to  merit  the 
bestowal  of  the  Iron  Cross.  But  as  we  came 
away,  I  was  in  doubt  on  a  certain  point  and, 
for  that  matter,  am  still  in  doubt  on  it:  I  am 
in  doubt  as  to  which  of  two  men  most  fitly 
typified  the  spirit  of  the  German  Army  in  this 
war— the  general  feeding  his  men  by  thousands 
into  the  maw  of  destruction  because  it  was  an 
order,  or  the  pot-wrestling  private  soldier,  the 
camp  cook,  going  to  death  with  a  coffee  boiler 
in  his  hands — because  it  was  an  order. 


[225] 


CHAPTER  IX 
VIEWING  A  BATTLE  FROM  A  BALLOON 


SHE  was  anchored  to  earth  in  a  good-sized 
field.  Woods  horizoned  the  field  on 
three  of  its  edges  and  a  sunken  road 
bounded  it  on  the  fourth.  She  measured, 
I  should  say  at  an  offhand  guess,  seventy -five 
feet  from  tip  to  tip  lengthwise,  and  she  was 
perhaps  twenty  feet  in  diameter  through  her 
middle.  She  was  a  bright  yellow  in  color — 
a  varnished,  oily-looking  yellow — and  in  shape 
suggestive  of  a  frankfurter. 

At  the  end  of  her  near  the  ground  and  on  the 
side  that  was  underneath — for  she  swung,  you 
understand,  at  an  angle — a  swollen  protu- 
berance showed,  as  though  an  air  bubble  had 
got  under  the  skin  of  the  sausage  during  the 
packing  and  made  a  big  blister.  She  drooped 
weakly  amidships,  bending  and  swaying  this 
way  and  that;  and,  as  we  came  under  her 
and  looked  up,  we  saw  that  the  skin  of  the 
belly  kept  shrinking  in  and  wrinkling  up,  in 
the  unmistakable  pangs  of  acute  cramp  colic. 
[  226  ] 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

She  had  a  sickly,  depleted  aspect  elsewhere, 
and  altogether  was  most  flabby  and  unreliable 
looking;  yet  this,  as  I  learned  subsequently, 
was  her  normal  appearance.  Being  in  the 
business  of  spying  she  practiced  deceit,  with 
the  deliberate  intent  of  seeming  to  be  what, 
emphatically,  she  was  not.  She  counterfeited 
chronic  invalidism  and  she  performed  compe- 
tently. 

She  was  an  observation  balloon  of  the  pat- 
tern privily  chosen  by  the  German  General 
Staff,  before  the  beginning  of  the  war,  for  the 
use  of  the  German  Signal  Corps.  On  this  par- 
ticular date  and  occasion  she  operated  at  a 
point  of  the  highest  strategic  importance,  that 
point  being  the  center  of  the  German  battle 
lines  along  the  River  Aisne. 

She  had  been  stationed  here  now  for  more 
than  a  week — that  is  to  say,  ever  since  her 
predecessor  was  destroyed  in  a  ball  of  flaming 
fumes  as  a  result  of  having  a  bomb  flung 
through  the  flimsy  cloth  envelope  by  a  coursing 
and  accurate  aviator  of  the  enemy.  No  doubt 
she  would  continue  to  be  stationed  here  until 
some  such  mischance  befell  her  too. 

On  observation  balloons,  in  time  of  war,  no 
casualty  insurance  is  available  at  any  rate  of 
premium.  I  believe  those  who  ride  in  them  are 
also  regarded  as  unsuitable  risks.  This  was 
highly  interesting  to  hear  and,  for  our  jour- 
nalistic purposes,  very  valuable  to  know;  but, 
speaking  personally,  I  may  say  that  the  thing 
[227] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


which  most  nearly  concerned  me  for  the  moment 
was  this:  I  had  just  been  invited  to  take  a  trip 
aloft  in  this  wabbly  great  wienerwurst,  with  its 
painted  silk  cuticle  and  its  gaseous  vitals — 
and  had,  on  impulse,  accepted. 

I  was  informed  at  the  time,  and  have  since 
been  reinformed  more  than  once,  that  I  am 
probably  the  only  civilian  spectator  who  has 
enjoyed  such  a  privilege  during  the  present 
European  war.  Assuredly,  to  date  and  to  the 
best  of  my  knowledge  and  belief,  I  am  the 
only  civilian  who  has  been  so  favored  by  the 
Germans.  Well,  I  trust  I  am  not  hoggish. 
Possessing,  as  it  does,  this  air  of  uniqueness, 
the  distinction  is  worth  much  to  me  personally. 
I  would  not  take  anything  for  the  experience; 
but  I  do  not  think  I  shall  take  it  again,  even 
if  the  chance  should  come  my  way,  which  very 
probably  it  will  not. 

It  was  mid-afternoon;  and  all  day,  since 
early  breakfast,  we  had  been  working  our  way 
in  automobiles  toward  this  destination.  Al- 
ready my  brain  chambered  more  impressions, 
all  jumbled  together  in  a  mass,  than  I  could 
possibly  hope  to  get  sorted  out  and  graded 
up  and  classified  in  a  month  of  trying.  Yet, 
in  a  way,  the  day  had  been  disappointing;  for, 
as  I  may  have  set  forth  before,  the  nearer  we 
came  to  the  actual  fighting,  the  closer  in  toii'^ii 
we  got  with  the  battle  itself,  the  less  we  seen]'  d 
to  see  of  it. 

I  take  it  this  is  true  of  nearly  all  battles 
[  228 1 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

fought  under  modern  military  principles.  Ten 
miles  in  the  rear,  or  even  twenty  miles,  is 
really  a  better  place  to  be  if  you  are  seeking 
to  fix  in  your  mind  a  reasonably  full  picture 
of  the  scope  and  effect  and  consequences  of  the 
hideous  thing  called  war.  Back  there  you  see 
the  new  troops  going  in,  girding  themselves 
for  the  grapple  as  they  go;  you  see  the  re- 
enforcements  coming  up;  you  see  the  supplies 
hurrying  forward,  and  the  spare  guns  and  the 
extra  equipment,  and  all  the  rest  of  it;  you  see, 
and  can,  after  a  dim  fashion,  grasp  mentally, 
the  thrusting,  onward  movement  of  this  highly 
scientific  and  most  unromantic  industry  which 
half  the  world  began  practicing  in  the  fall 
of  1914. 

Finally,  you  see  the  finished  fabrics  of  the 
trade  coming  back;  and  by  that  I  mean  the 
dribbling  streams  of  the  wounded  and,  in  the 
fields  and  woods  through  which  you  pass,  the 
dead,  lying  in  windrov/s  where  they  fell.  At 
the  front  you  see  only,  for  the  main  part,  men 
engaged  in  the  most  tedious,  the  most  exacting, 
and  seemingly  the  most  futile  form  of  day  labor 
— toiling  in  filth  and  foulness  and  a  desperate 
driven  haste,  on  a  job  that  many  of  them  will 
never  live  to  see  finished- — if  it  is  ever  finished; 
working  under  taskmasters  who  spare  them 
not— neither  do  they  spare  themselves;  putting 
through  a  dreary  contract,  whereof  the  chief 
reward  is  weariness  and  the  common  coinage 
of  payment  is  death  outright  or  death  lin- 
[2291 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


gering.  That  is  a  battle  in  these  days;  that 
is  war. 

So  twistiwise  was  our  route,  and  so  rapidly 
did  we  pursue  it  after  we  left  the  place  where 
we  took  lunch,  that  I  confess  I  lost  all  sense  of 
direction.  It  seemed  to  me  our  general  course 
was  eastward;  I  discovered  afterward  it  was 
southwesterly.  At  any  rate  we  eventually 
found  ourselves  in  a  road  that  wound  between 
high  grassy  banks  along  a  great  natural  terrace 
just  below  the  level  of  the  plateau  in  front  of 
Laon.  We  saw  a  few  farmhouses,  all  desolated 
by  shellfire  and  all  deserted,  and  a  succession 
of  empty  fields  and  patches  of  woodland. 
None  of  the  natives  were  in  sight.  Through 
fear  of  prying  hostile  eyes,  the  Germans  had 
seen  fit  to  clear  them  out  of  this  immediate 
vicinity.  Anyhow,  a  majority  of  them  doubt- 
lessly ran  away  \shen  fighting  first  started 
here,  three  weeks  earlier;  the  Germans  had 
got  rid  of  those  who  remained.  Likewise  of 
troops  there  were  very  few  to  be  seen.  We 
did  meet  one  squad  of  Red  Cross  men,  march- 
ing afoot  through  the  dust.  They  were  all 
fully  armed,  as  is  the  way  with  the  German 
field-hospital  helpers;  and,  for  all  I  know  to 
the  contrary,  that  may  be  the  way  with  the 
field-hospital  helpers  of  the  Allies  too. 

Though  I  have  often  seen  it,  the  Cross  on 

the  sleeve-band  of  a  man  who  bears  a  revolver 

in  his  belt,  or  a  rifle  on  his  arm,  has  always 

struck  me  as  a  most  incongruous  thing.     The 

[230] 


VIEWING  A  BATTLE  FROM  A  BALLOON 

noncommissioned  oiEcer  in  charge  of  th^  squad 
— chief  orderly  I  suppose  you  might  call 
him — held  by  leashes  four  Red  Cross  dogs. 

In  Belgium,  back  in  August,  I  had  seen  so- 
called  dog  batteries.  Going  into  Louvain  on 
the  day  the  Belgian  Army,  or  what  was  left 
of  it,  fell  back  into  Brussels,  I  passed  a  valley 
where  many  dogs  were  hitched  to  small  ma- 
chine guns;  and  I  could  not  help  wondering 
what  would  happen  to  the  artillery  formation, 
and  what  to  the  discipline  of  the  pack,  if  a 
rabbit  should  choose  that  moment  for  darting 
across  the  battle  front. 

These,  however,  were  the  first  dogs  I  had 
found  engaged  in  hospital-corps  employment. 
They  were  big,  wolfish-looking  hounds,  shaggy 
and  sharp-nosed;  and  each  of  the  four  wore  a 
collar  of  bells  on  his  neck,  and  a  cloth  harness 
on  his  shoulders,  with  the  red  Maltese  cross 
displayed  on  its  top  and  sides.  Their  business 
was  to  go  to  the  place  where  fighting  had  taken 
place  and  search  out  the  fallen. 

At  this  business  they  were  reputed  to  be 
highly  efficient.  The  Germans  had  found  them 
especially  useful;  for  the  German  field  uniform, 
which  has  the  merit  of  merging  into  the  natural 
background  at  a  short  distance,  becomes, 
through  that  very  protective  coloration,  a  dis- 
advantage when  its  wearer  drops  wounded  and 
unconscious  on  the  open  field.  In  a  poor  light 
the  litter  bearers  might  search  within  a  few 
rods  of  him  and  never  see  him;  but  where  the 
[231] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


faulty  eyesight  fails  the  nose  of  the  dog  sniffs 
the  human  taint  in  the  air,  and  the  dog  makes 
the  work  of  rescue  thorough  and  complete.  At 
least  we  were  told  so. 

Presently  our  automobile  rounded  a  bend 
in  the  road,  and  the  observation  balloon,  which 
until  that  moment  we  had  been  unable  to 
glimpse,  by  reason  of  an  intervening  formation 
of  ridges,  revealed  itself  before  us.  The  sudden- 
ness of  its  appearance  was  startling.  We  did 
not  see  it  until  we  were  within  a  hundred  yards 
of  it.  At  once  we  realized  how  perfect  an 
abiding  place  this  was  for  a  thing  which  offered 
so  fine  and  looming  a  target. 

Moreover,  the  balloon  was  most  effectively 
guarded  against  attack  at  close  range.  We 
became  aware  of  that  fact  when  we  dismounted 
from  the  automobile  and  were  clambering  up 
the  steep  bank  alongside.  Soldiers  materialized 
from  everywhere,  like  dusty  specters,  but  fell 
back,  saluting,  when  they  saw  that  officers 
accompanied  us.  On  advice  we  had  already 
thrown  away  our  lighted  cigars;  but  two  non- 
commissioned officers  felt  it  to  be  their  bounden 
duty  to  warn  us  against  striking  matches  in 
that  neighborhood.  You  dare  not  take  chances 
with  a  woven  bag  that  is  packed  with  many 
hundred  cubic  feet  of  gas. 

At  the  moment  of  our  arrival  the  balloon  was 

drawn  down  so  near  the  earth  that  its  distorted 

bottommost    extremity    dipped    and    twisted 

slackly  within  fifty  or  sixty  feet  of  the  grass. 

[2321 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

The  upper  end,  reaching  much  farther  into  the 
air,  underwent  convulsive  writhings  and  con- 
tortions as  an  intermittent  breeze  came  over 
the  sheltering  treetops  and  buffeted  it  in  puffs. 
Alniost  beneath  the  balloon  six  big  draft  horses 
stood,  hitched  in  pairs  to  a  stout  wagon 
frame  on  which  a  huge  wooden  drum  was 
mounted. 

Round  this  drum  a  wire  cable  was  coiled, 
and  a  length  of  the  cable  stretched  like  a  snake 
across  the  field  to  where  it  ended  in  a  swivel, 
made  fast  to  the  bottom  of  the  riding  car. 
It  was  not,  strictly  speaking,  a  riding  car.  It 
was  a  straight-up-and-down  basket  of  tough, 
light  wicker,  no  larger  and  very  little  deeper 
than  an  ordinarily  fair-sized  hamper  for  soiled 
linen.  Indeed,  that  was  what  it  reminded  one 
of — a  clothesbasket. 

Grouped  about  the  team  and  the  wagon 
were  soldiers  to  the  number  of  perhaps  a  third 
of  a  company.  Half  a  dozen  of  them  stood 
about  the  basket  holding  it  steady— or  trying 
to.  Heavy  sandbags  hung  pendentwise  about 
the  upper  rim  of  the  basket,  looking  very 
much  like  so  many  canvased  hams;  but,  even 
with  these  drags  on  it  and  in  spite  of  the  grips 
of  the  men  on  the  guy  ropes  of  its  rigging,  it 
bumped  and  bounded  uneasily  to  the  con- 
tinual rocking  of  the  gas  bag  above  it.  Every 
moment  or  two  it  would  lift  itself  a  foot  or 
so  and  tilt  and  jerk,  and  then  come  back 
again  with  a  thump  that  made  it  shiver. 
[2331 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Of  furnishings  the  interior  of  the  car  con- 
tained nothing  except  a  telephone,  fixed  against 
one  side  of  it;  a  pair  of  field  glasses,  swung 
in  a  sort  of  harness ;  and  a  strip  of  tough  canvas, 
looped  across  halfway  down  in  it.  The  oper- 
ator, when  wearied  by  standing,  might  sit 
astride  this  canvas  saddle,  with  his  legs  cramped 
under  him,  while  he  spied  out  the  land  with 
his  eyes,  which  would  then  be  just  above  the 
top  of  his  wicker  nest,  and  while  he  spoke  over 
the  telephone. 

The  wires  of  the  telephone  escaped  through 
a  hole  under  his  feet  and  ran  to  a  concealed 
station  at  the  far  side  of  the  field  which  in 
turn  communicated  with  the  main  exchange 
at  headquarters  three  miles  away;  which  in  its 
turn  radiated  other  wires  to  all  quarters  of  the 
battle  front.  Now  the  wires  were  neatly  coiled 
on  the  ground  beside  the  basket.  A  sergeant 
stood  over  them  to  prevent  any  careless  foot 
from  stepping  on  the  precious  strands.  He 
guarded  them  as  jealously  as  a  hen  guards  her 
brood. 

The  magazine  containing  retorts  of  specially 
prepared  gas,  for  recharging  the  envelope  when 
evaporation  and  leakage  had  reduced  the  vol- 
ume below  the  lifting  and  floating  point,  was 
nowhere  in  sight.  It  must  have  been  some- 
where near  by,  but  we  saw  no  signs  of  it.  Nor 
did  our  guides  for  the  day  offer  to  show  us  its 
whereabouts.  However,  knowing  what  I  do 
of  the  German  system  of  doing  things,  I  will 
[2341 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

venture  the  assertion  that  it  was  snugly  hidden 
and  stoutly  protected. 

These  details  I  had  time  to  take  in,  when 
there  came  across  the  field  to  join  us  a  tall 
young  officer  with  a  three  weeks'  growth  of 
stubby  black  beard  on  his  face.  A  genial  and 
captivating  gentleman  was  Lieutenant  Brinkner 
und  Meiningen,  and  I  enjoyed  my  meeting  with 
him;  and  often  since  that  day  in  my  thoughts 
I  have  wished  him  well.  However,  I  doubt 
whether  he  will  be  living  by  the  time  these 
lines  see  publication. 

It  is  an  exciting  life  a  balloon  operator  in 
the  German  Army  lives,  but  it  is  not,  as  a 
rule,  a  long  one.  Lieutenant  Meiningen  was 
successor  to  a  man  who  was  burned  to  death 
in  mid-air  a  week  before;  and  on  the  day  before 
a  French  airman  had  dropped  a  bomb  from 
the  clouds  that  missed  this  same  balloon  by 
a  margin  of  less  than  a  hundred  yards — close 
marksmanship,  considering  that  the  airman  in 
question  was  seven  or  eight  thousand  feet  aloft, 
and  moving  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  or  so  a  minute 
when  he  made  his  cast. 

It  was  the  Lieutenant  who  said  he  had  au- 
thority to  take  one  of  our  number  up  with 
him,  and  it  was  I  who  chanced  to  be  nearest 
to  the  balloon  when  he  extended  the  invita- 
tion. Some  one — a  friend — removed  from  be- 
tween my  teeth  the  unlighted  cigar  I  held  there, 
for  fear  I  might  forget  and  try  to  light  it; 
and  somebody  else — a  stranger  to  me — sug- 
[235] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


gested  that  perhaps  I  was  too  heavy  for  a 
passenger. 

By  that  time,  however,  a  kindly  corporal 
had  boosted  me  up  over  the  rim  of  the  basket 
and  helped  me  to  squeeze  through  the  thick 
netting  of  guy  lines;  and  there  I  was,  standing 
inside  that  overgrown  clotheshamper,  which 
came  up  breast  high  on  me — and  Brinkner  und 
Meiningen  was  swinging  himself  nimbly  in  be- 
side me.  That  basket  was  meant  to  hold  but 
one  man.  It  made  a  wondrously  snug  fit  for 
two;  the  both  of  us  being  full-sized  adults  at 
that.  We  stood  back  to  back;  and  to  address 
the  other  each  must  needs  speak  over  his 
shoulder.  The  canvas  saddle  was  between 
us,  dangling  against  the  calves  of  our  legs; 
and  the  telephone  was  in  front  of  the  lieu- 
tenant, where  he  could  reach  the  transmitter 
with  his  lips  by  stooping  a  little. 

The  soldiers  began  unhooking  the  sandbags; 
the  sergeant  who  guarded  the  telephone  wire 
took  up  a  strand  of  it  and  held  it  loosely  in  his 
hands,  ready  to  pay  it  out.  Under  me  I  felt 
the  basket  heave  gently.  Looking  up  I  saw 
that  the  balloon  was  no  longer  a  crooked 
sausage.  She  had  become  a  big,  soft,  yellow 
summer  squash,  with  an  attenuated  neck. 
The  flaccid  abdomen  flinched  in  and  puffed 
out,  and  the  snout  wabbled  to  and  fro. 

The  lieutenant  began  telling  me  things  in 
badly  broken  but  painstaking  English — such 
things,  for  example,  as  that  the  baglike  pro- 
[236] 


VIEWING  A  BATTLE  FROM  A  BALLOON 

tuberance  just  above  our  heads,  at  the  bottom 
end  of  the  envelope,  contained  air,  which,  being 
heavier  than  gas,  served  as  a  balance  to  hold 
her  head  up  in  the  wind  and  keep  her  from 
folding  in  on  herself;  also,  that  it  was  his  duty 
to  remain  aloft,  at  the  end  of  his  tether,  as 
long  as  he  could,  meantime  studying  the  effect 
of  the  Gernian  shell-fire  on  the  enemy's 
position  and  telephoning  down  instructions 
for  the  better  aiming  of  the  guns — a  job 
wherein  the  aeroplane  scouts  ably  reenforced 
him,  since  they  could  range  at  will,  whereas 
his  position  was  comparatively  fixed  and  sta- 
tionary. 

Also  I  remember  his  saying,  with  a  tinge  of 
polite  regret  in  his  tone,  that  he  was  sorry  I  had 
not  put  on  a  uniform  overcoat  with  shoulder 
straps  on  it,  before  boarding  the  car;  because, 
as  he  took  pains  to  explain,  in  the  event  of 
our  cable  parting  and  of  our  drifting  over  the 
Allies'  lines  and  then  descending,  he  might 
possibly  escape,  but  I  should  most  likely  be 
shot  on  the  spot  as  a  spy  before  I  had  a  chance 
to  explain.  "However,"  he  added  consolingly, 
"those  are  possibilities  most  remote.  The  rope 
is  not  likely  to  break;  and  if  it  did  we  both 
should  probably  be  dead  before  we  ever  reached 
the  earth." 

That  last  statement  sank  deep  into  my  con- 
sciousness; but  I  fear  I  did  not  hearken  so  at- 
tentively as  I  ought  to  the  continuation  of 
the  lieutenant's  conversation,  because,  right 
[2371 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


in  the  middle  of  his  remarks,  something  had 
begun  to  happen. 

An  oflBcer  had  stepped  up  alongside  to  tell 
me  that  very  shortly  I  should  undoubtedly 
be  quite  seasick— or,  rather,  skysick — because 
of  the  pitching  about  of  the  basket  when  the 
balloon  reached  the  end  of  the  cable;  and  I  was 
trying  to  listen  to  him  with  one  ear  and  to 
my  prospective  traveling  companion  with  the 
other  when  I  suddenly  realized  that  the 
officer's  face  was  no  longer  on  a  level  with  mine. 
It  was  several  feet  below  mine.  No;  it  was 
not — it  was  several  yards  below  mine.  Now  he 
was  looking  up  toward  us,  shouting  out  his 
words,  with  his  hands  funneled  about  his 
mouth  for  a  speaking  trumpet.  And  at  every 
word  he  uttered  he  shrank  iuto  himself,  grow- 
ing shorter  and  shorter. 

It  was  not  that  we  seemed  to  be  moving. 
We  seemed  to  be  standing  perfectly  still,  with- 
out any  motion  of  any  sort  except  a  tiny 
teetering  motion  of  the  hamper-basket,  while 
the  earth  and  what  was  on  it  fell  rapidly  away 
from  beneath  us.  At  once  all  sense  of  per- 
spective became  distorted. 

When  on  the  roof  of  a  tall  building  this  dis- 
tortion had  never  seemed  to  me  so  great.  I 
imagine  this  is  because  the  building  remains 
stationary  and  a  balloon  moves.  Almost  di- 
rectly below  us  was  one  of  our  party,  wearing 
a  soft  hat  with  a  flattish  brim.  It  appeared 
to  me  that  almost  instantly  his  shoulders  and 
[2381 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

body  and  legs  vanished.  Nothing  remained 
of  him  but  his  hat,  which  looked  exactly  like 
a  thumb  tack  driven  into  a  slightly  tilted 
drawing  board,  the  tilted  drawing  board  being 
the  field.  The  field  seemed  sloped  now,  in- 
stead of  flat. 

Across  the  sunken  road  was  another  field. 
Its  owner,  I  presume,  had  started  to  turn  it 
up  for  fall  planting,  when  the  armies  came  along 
and  chased  him  away;  so  there  remained  a  wide 
plowed  strip,  and  on  each  side  of  it  a  narrower 
strip  of  unplowed  earth.  Even  as  I  peered 
downward  at  it,  this  field  was  transformed 
into  a  width  of  brown  corduroy  trimmed  with 
green  velvet. 

For  a  rudder  we  carried  a  long,  flapping 
clothesline  arrangement,  like  the  tail  of  a  kite, 
to  the  lower  end  of  which  were  threaded  seven 
yellow-silk  devices  suggesting  inverted  sun- 
shades without  handles.  These  things  must 
have  been  spaced  on  the  tail  at  equal  distances 
apart,  but  as  they  rose  from  the  earth  and 
followed  after  us,  whipping  in  the  wind,  the 
uppermost  one  became  a  big  umbrella  turned 
inside  out;  the  second  was  half  of  a  pumpkin; 
the  third  was  a  yellow  soup  plate;  the  fourth 
was  a  poppy  bloom;  and  the  remaining  three 
were  just  amber  beads  of  diminishing  sizes. 

Probably  it  took  longer,  but  if  you  asked 

me  I  should  say  that  not  more  than  two  or 

three    minutes    had    passed    before    the    earth 

stopped    slipping    away    and    we    fetched    up 

[  9.39  1 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


with  a  profound  and  disconcerting  jerk.  The 
balloon  had  reached  the  tip  of  her  hitch  line. 

She  rocked  and  twisted  and  bent  half  double 
in  the  pangs  of  a  fearful  tummy-ache,  and  at 
every  paroxysm  the  car  lurched  in  sympathy, 
only  to  be  brought  up  short  by  the  pull  of  the 
taut  cable;  so  that  we  two,  wedged  in  together 
as  we  were,  nevertheless  jostled  each  other 
violently.  I  am  a  poor  sailor,  both  by  instinct 
and  training.  By  rights  and  by  precedents  I 
should  have  been  violently  ill  on  the  instant; 
but  I  did  not  have  time  to  be  ill. 

My  fellow  traveler  all  this  while  was  pointing 
out  this  thing  and  that  to  me — showing  how 
the  telephone  operated;  how  his  field  glasses 
poised  just  before  his  eyes,  being  swung  and 
balanced  on  a  delicately  adjusted  suspended 
pivot;  telling  me  how  on  a  perfectly  clear  day 
— this  October  day  was  slightly  hazy — we 
could  see  the  Eiffel  Tower  in  Paris,  and  the 
Cathedral  at  Rheims;  gyrating  his  hands  to 
explain  the  manner  in  which  the  horses,  trot- 
ting away  from  us  as  we  climbed  upward,  had 
given  to  the  drum  on  the  wagon  a  reverse 
motion,  so  that  the  cable  was  payed  out  evenly 
and  regularly.  But  I  am  afraid  I  did  not  listen 
closely.  My  eyes  were  so  busy  that  my  ears 
loafed  on  the  job. 

For  once  in  my  life — and  doubtlessly  only 

once — I  saw  now  understandingly  a  battle  front. 

It  was  spread  before  me — lines  and  dots  and 

dashes  on  a  big  green  and  bro^sTi  and  yellow 

[240] 


VIEWING  A  BATTLE  FROM  A  BALLOON 

map.  Why,  the  whole  thing  was  as  plain  as  a 
chart.  I  had  a  reserved  seat  for  the  biggest 
show  on  earth. 

To  be  sure  it  was  a  gallery  seat,  for  the  ter- 
race from  which  we  started  stood  fully  five 
hundred  feet  above  the  bottom  of  the  valley, 
and  we  had  ascended  approximately  seven 
hundred  feet  above  that,  giving  us  an  altitude 
of,  say,  twelve  hundred  feet  in  all  above  the 
level  of  the  river;  but  a  gallery  seat  suited  me. 
It  suited  me  perfectly.  The  great  plateau, 
stretching  from  the  high  hill  behind  us,  to  the 
river  in  front  of  us,  portrayed  itself,  when 
viewed  from  aloft,  as  a  shallow  bowl,  alter- 
nately grooved  by  small  depressions  and  corru- 
gated by  small  ridges.  Here  and  there  were 
thin  woodlands,  looking  exactly  like  scrubby 
clothesbrushes.  The  fields  were  checkered 
squares  and  oblongs,  and  a  ruined  village  in 
the  distance  seemed  a  jumbled  handful  of 
children's  gray  and  red  blocks. 

The  German  batteries  appeared  now  to  be 
directly  beneath  us — some  of  them,  though  in 
reality  I  imagine  the  nearest  one  must  have 
been  nearly  a  mile  away  on  a  bee  line.  They 
formed  an  irregular  horseshoe,  with  the  open 
end  of  it  toward  us.  There  was  a  gap  in  the 
horseshoe  where  the  calk  should  have  been. 
The  German  trenches,  for  the  most  part,  lay 
inside  the  encircling  lines  of  batteries.  In 
shape  they  rather  suggested  a  U  turned  upside 
down;  yet  it  was  hard  to  ascribe  to  them  any 
[241] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


real  shape,  since  they  zigzagged  so  crazily. 
I  could  tell,  though,  there  was  sanity  in  this 
seeming  madness,  for  nearly  every  trench  was 
joined  at  an  acute  angle  with  its  neighbor;  so 
that  a  man,  or  a  body  of  men,  starting  at  the 
rear,  out  of  danger,  might  move  to  the  very 
front  of  the  fighting  zone  and  all  the  time  be 
well  sheltered.  So  far  as  I  could  make  out  there 
were  but  few  breaks  in  the  sequence  of  com- 
munications. One  of  these  breaks  was  almost 
directly  in  front  of  me  as  I  stood  facing  the 
south. 

The  batteries  of  the  Allies  and  their  infantry 
trenches,  being  so  much  farther  away,  were 
less  plainly  visible.  I  could  discern  their  loca- 
tion without  being  able  to  grasp  their  general 
arrangement.  Between  the  nearer  infantry 
trenches  of  the  two  opposing  forces  were  tiny 
dots  in  the  ground,  each  defined  by  an  infini- 
tesimal hillock  of  yellow  earth  heaped  before 
it — observation  pits  these,  where  certain  picked 
men,  who  do  not  expect  to  live  very  long  any- 
way, hide  themselves  av/ay  to  keep  tally  on 
the  effect  of  the  shells,  which  go  singing  past 
just  over  their  heads  to  fall  among  the  enemy, 
who  may  be  only  a  few  hundred  feet  or  a  few 
hundred  yards  away  from  the  observers. 

It  was  an  excessively  busy  afternoon  among 
the  guns.  They  spoke  continually — now  this 
battery  going,  now  that;  now  two  or  three  or  a 
dozen  together — and  the  sound  of  them  came 
up  to  us  in  claps  and  roars  like  summer  thun- 
[242] 


VIEWING  A  BATTLE  FROM  A  BALLOON 

der.  Sometimes,  when  a  battery  close  by  let 
go,  I  could  watch  the  thin,  shreddy  trail  of 
fine  smoke  that  marked  the  arched  flight  of  a 
shrapnel  bomb,  almost  from  the  very  mouth 
of  the  gun  clear  to  where  it  burst  out  into  a 
fluffy  white  powder  puff  inside  the  enemy's 
position. 

Contrariwise,  I  could  see  how  shells  from  the 
enemy  crossed  those  shells  in  the  air  and  curved 
downward  to  scatter  their  iron  sprays  among 
the  Germans.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  would 
come  a  sharp,  spattering  sound,  as  though  hail 
in  the  heighth  of  the  thunder  shower  had  fallen 
on  a  tin  roof;  and  that,  I  learned,  meant  in- 
fantry firing  in  a  trench  somewhere. 

For  a  Vv^hile  I  watched  some  German  soldiers 
moving  forward  through  a  criss-cross  of 
trenches;  I  took  them  to  be  fresh  men  going 
in  to  relieve  other  men  who  had  seen  a  period 
of  service  under  fire.  At  first  they  suggested 
moles  crawling  through  plow  furrows;  then,  as 
they  progressed  onward,  they  shrank  to  the 
smallness  of  gray  grub -worms,  advancing  one 
behind  another.  My  eye  strayed  beyond  them 
a  fair  distance  and  fell  on  a  row  of  tiny  scarlet 
dots,  like  cochineal  bugs,  showing  minutely 
but  clearly  against  the  green-yellow  face  of  a 
ridgy  field  well  inside  the  forward  batteries 
of  the  French  and  English.  At  that  same 
instant  the  lieutenant  must  have  seen  the  crawl- 
ing red  line  too.     He  pointed  to  it. 

"Frenchmen,"  he  said;  "French  infantry- 
[243] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


men's  trousers.  One  cannot  make  out  their 
coats,  but  their  red  trousers  show  as  they 
wriggle  forward  on  their  faces." 

Better  than  ever  before  I  realized  the  error 
of  sending  men  to  fight  in  garments  that  make 
vivid  targets  of  them. 

My  companion  may  have  come  up  for  pleas- 
ure, but  if  business  obtruded  itself  on  him  he 
did  not  neglect  it.  He  bent  to  his  telephone 
and  spoke  briskly  into  it.  He  used  German, 
but,  after  a  fashion,  I  made  out  what  he  said. 
He  was  directing  the  attention  of  somebody  to 
the  activities  of  those  red  trousers. 

I  intended  to  see  what  would  follow  on  this, 
but  at  this  precise  moment  a  sufficiently  inter- 
esting occurrence  came  to  pass  at  a  place 
within  much  clearer  eye  range.  The  gray  grub- 
worms  had  shoved  ahead  until  they  were  gray 
ants;  and  now  all  the  ants  concentrated  into 
a  swarm  and,  leaving  the  trenches,  began  to 
move  in  a  slanting  direction  toward  a  patch  of 
woods  far  over  to  our  left.  Some  of  them,  I 
think,  got  there,  some  of  them  did  not.  Cer- 
tain puff-balls  of  white  smoke,  and  one  big 
smudge  of  black  smoke,  which  last  signified 
a  bomb  of  high  explosives,  broke  over  them 
and  among  them,  hiding  all  from  sight  for  a 
space  of  seconds.  Dust  clouds  succeeded  the 
smoke;  then  the  dust  lifted  slowly.  Those 
ants  were  not  to  be  seen.  They  had  altogether 
vanished.  It  was  as  though  an  anteater  had 
come  forth  invisibly  and  eaten  them  all  up. 
[244] 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

Marveling  at  this  phenomenon  and  unable 
to  convince  myself  that  I  had  seen  men  de- 
stroyed, and  not  insects,  I  turned  my  head 
south  again  to  watch  the  red  ladybugs  in  the 
field.  Lo!  They  were  gone  too!  Either  they 
had  reached  shelter  or  a  painful  thing  had 
befallen  them. 

The  telephone  spoke  a  brisk  warning.  I 
think  it  made  a  clicking  sound.  I  am  sure  it 
did  not  ring;  but  in  any  event  it  called  attention 
to  itself.  The  other  man  clapped  his  ear  to 
the  receiver  and  took  heed  to  the  word  that 
came  up  the  dangling  wire,  and  snapped  back 
an  answer. 

"I  think  we  should  return  at  once,"  he  said 
to  me  over  his  shoulder.  "Are  you  sufficiently 
wearied.'^" 

I  was  not  sufficiently  wearied — I  wasn't 
wearied  at  all — but  he  was  the  captain  of  the 
ship  and  I  was  not  even  paying  for  my  passage. 

The  car  jerked  beneath  our  unsteady  feet 
and  heeled  over,  and  I  had  the  sensation  of 
being  in  an  elevator  that  has  started  down- 
ward suddenly,  and  at  an  angle  to  boot.  The 
balloon  resisted  the  pressure  from  below.  It 
curled  up  its  tail  like  a  fat  bumblebee  trying 
to  sting  itself,  and  the  guy  ropes,  to  which  I 
held  with  both  hands,  snapped  in  imitation 
of  the  rigging  of  a  sailboat  in  a  fair  breeze. 
Plainly  the  balloon  wished  to  remain  where 
it  was  or  go  farther;  but  the  pull  of  the  cable 
was  steady  and  hard,  and  the  world  began  to 
[2451 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


rise  up  to  meet  us.  Nearing  the  earth  it 
struck  me  that  we  were  making  a  remarkably 
speedy  return.  I  craned  my  neck  to  get  a  view 
of  what  was  directly  beneath. 

The  six-horse  team  was  advancing  toward 
us  at  a  brisk  canter  and  the  drum  turned  fast, 
taking  up  the  slack  of  the  tether;  but,  as  though 
not  satisfied  with  this  rate  of  progress,  several 
soldiers  were  running  back  and  jumping  up 
to  haul  in  the  rope.  The  sergeant  who  took 
care  of  the  telephone  was  hard  put  to  it  to 
coil  down  the  twin  wires.  He  skittered  about 
over  the  grass  with  the  liveliness  of  a  cricket. 

Many  soiled  hands  grasped  the  floor  of  our 
hamper  and  eased  the  jar  of  its  contact  with 
the  earth.  Those  same  hands  had  redraped 
the  rim  with  sandbags,  and  had  helped  us  to 
clamber  out  from  between  the  stay  ropes, 
when  up  came  the  young  captain  who  spelled 
the  lieutenant  as  an  aerial  spy.  He  came  at 
a  run.  Between  the  two  of  them  ensued  a 
sharp  interchange  of  short  German  sentences. 
I  gathered  the  sense  of  what  passed. 

"I  don't  see  it  now,"  said,  in  effect,  my  late 
traveling  mate,  staring  skyward  and  turning 
his  head. 

"Nor  do  I,'"  answered  the  captain.  "I 
thought  it  was  yonder."  He  flirted  a  thumb 
backward  and  upward  over  his  shoulder. 

"Are  you  sure  you  saw  it.^" 

"No,  not  sure,"  said  the  captain.  "I  called 
you  down  at  the  first  alarm,  and  right  after 
[2461 


VIEWING    A    BATTLE    FROM    A    BALLOON 

that  it  disappeared,  I  think;  but  I  shall  make 
sure." 

He  snapped  an  order  to  the  soldiers  and 
vaulted  nimbly  into  the  basket.  The  horses 
turned  about  and  moved  off  and  the  balloon 
rose.  As  for  the  lieutenant,  he  spun  round 
and  ran  toward  the  edge  of  the  field,  fumbling 
at  his  belt  for  his  private  field  glasses  as  he 
ran.  Wondering  what  all  this  pother  was 
about — though  I  had  a  vague  idea  regarding 
its  meaning — I  watched  the  ascent. 

I  should  say  the  bag  had  reached  a  height 
of  five  hundred  feet  when,  behind  me,  a  hun- 
dred yards  or  so  away,  a  soldier  shrieked  out 
excitedly.  Farther  along  another  voice  took 
up  the  outcry.  From  every  side  of  the  field 
came  shouts.  The  field  was  ringed  with  clamor. 
It  dawned  on  me  that  this  spot  was  even  more 
efficiently  guarded  than  I  had  conceived  it 
to  be. 

The  driver  of  the  wagon  swung  his  lum- 
bering team  about  with  all  the  strength  of  his 
arms,  and  back  again  came  the  six  horses, 
galloping  now.  So  thickly  massed  were  the 
men  who  snatched  at  the  cable,  and  so  eagerly 
did  they  grab  for  it,  that  the  simile  of  a  hot 
handball  scrimmage  flashed  into  my  thoughts. 
I  will  venture  that  balloon  never  did  a  faster 
homing  job  than  it  did  then. 

Fifty  men  were  pointing  aloft  now,  all  of 
them  crying  out  as  they  pointed: 

'Flyer!    French  flyer!" 

f  247 1  ' 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


I  saw  it.  It  was  a  monoplane.  It  had,  I 
judged,  just  emerged  from  a  cloudbank  to 
the  southward.  It  was  heading  directly  to- 
ward our  field.  It  was  high  up — so  high  up 
that  I  felt  momentarily  amazed  that  all  those 
Germans  could  distinguish  it  as  a  French  flyer 
rather  than  as  an  English  flyer  at  that  distance. 

As  I  looked,  and  as  all  of  us  looked,  the  bal- 
loon basket  hit  the  earth  and  was  made  fast; 
and  in  that  same  instant  a  cannon  boomed 
somewhere  well  over  to  the  right.  Even  as 
someone  who  knew  sang  out  to  us  that  this 
was  the  balloon  cannon  in  the  German  aviation 
field  back  of  the  town  opening  up,  a  tiny  ball 
of  smoke  appeared  against  the  sky,  seemingly 
quite  close  to  the  darting  flyer,  and  blossom.ed 
out  with  downy,  dainty  white  petals,  like  a 
flower. 

The  monoplane  veered,  v/heeled  and  began 
to  drive  in  a  wriggling,  twisting  course.  The 
balloon  cannon  spoke  again.  Four  miles  away, 
to  the  eastward,  its  fellow  in  another  aviation 
camp  let  go,  and  the  sound  of  its  discharge 
cam.e  to  us  faintly  but  distinctly.  Another 
smoke  flower  unfolded  in  the  heavens,  some- 
what below  the  darting  airship. 

Both  guns  were  in  action  now.  Each  fired 
at  six-second  intervals.  All  about  the  flitting 
target  the  smokeballs  burst — above  it,  below 
it,  to  this  side  of  it  and  to  that.  They  polka- 
dotted  the  heavens  in  the  area  through  which 
the  Frenchman  scudded.  They  looked  like 
[  248 1 


VIEWING  A  BATTLE  FROM  A  BALLOON 

a  bed  of  white  water  lilies  and  he  like  a  black 
dragonfly  skimming  among  the  lilies.  It  was 
a  pretty  sight  and  as  thrilling  a  one  as  I  have 
ever  seen. 

I  cannot  analyze  my  emotions  as  I  viewed 
the  spectacle,  let  alone  try  to  set  them  down 
on  paper.  Alongside  of  this,  big-game  hunting 
was  a  commonplace  thing,  for  this  was  big- 
game  hunting  of  a  magnificent  kind,  new  to 
the  world — revolving  cannon,  with  a  range  of 
from  seven  to  eight  thousand  feet,  trying  to 
bring  down  a  human  being  out  of  the  very 
clouds. 

He  ran  for  his  life.  Once  I  thought  they 
had  him.  A  shell  burst  seemingly  quite  close 
to  him,  and  his  machine  dipped  far  to  one 
side  and  dropped  through  space  at  that  angle 
for  some  hundreds  of  feet  apparently. 

A  yell  of  exultation  rose  from  the  watching 
Germans,  who  knew  that  an  explosion  close 
to  an  aeroplane  is  often  sufficient,  through 
the  force  of  air  concussion  alone,  to  crumple 
the  flimsy  wings  and  bring  it  down,  even 
though  none  of  the  flying  shrapnel  from  the 
bursting  bomb  actually  touch  the  operator  or 
the  machine. 

However,  they  whooped  their  joy  too  soon. 
The  flyer  righted,  rose,  darted  confusingly  to 
the  right,  then  to  the  left,  and  then  bored 
straight  into  a  woolly  white  cloudrack  and  was 
gone.  The  moment  it  disappeared  the  two 
balloon  cannon  ceased  firing;  and  I,  taking 
[2491 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


stock  of  my  own  sensations,  found  myself 
quivering  all  over  and  quite  hoarse.  I  must 
have  done  some  yelling  myself. 

Subsequently,  I  decided  in  my  own  mind 
that  from  within  the  Allies'  lines  the  French- 
man saw  us — meaning  the  lieutenant  and 
myself — in  the  air,  and  came  forth  with  in- 
tent to  bombard  us  from  on  high;  that,  seeing 
us  descend,  he  hid  in  a  cloud  ambush,  ven- 
turing out  once  more,  with  his  purpose  re- 
newed, when  the  balloon  reascended,  bearing 
the  captain.  I  liked  to  entertain  that  idea, 
because  it  gave  me  a  feeling  of  having  shared 
to  some  degree  in  a  big  adventure. 

As  for  the  captain  and  the  lieutenant,  they 
advanced  no  theories  whatever.  The  thing 
was  all  in  the  day's  work  to  them.  It  had  hap- 
pened before.  I  have  no  doubt  it  has  happened 
many  times  since. 


[250] 


CHAPTER  X 
IN  THE  TRENCHES  BEFORE  RHEIMS 


AFTER  my  balloon-riding  experience 
what  followed  was  in  the  nature  of  an 
anticlimax — was  bound  to  be  anti- 
climactic.  Yet  the  remainder  of  the 
afternoon  was  not  without  action.  Not  an 
hour  later,  as  we  stood  in  a  battery  of  small 
field  guns — guns  I  had  watched  in  operation 
from  my  lofty  gallery  seat — another  flyer,  or 
possibly  the  same  one  we  had  already  seen, 
appeared  in  the  sky,  coming  now  in  a  long 
swinging  sweep  from  the  southwest,  and  making 
apparently  for  the  very  spot  where  our  party 
had  stationed  itself  to  watch  the  trim  little 
battery  perform. 

It  had  already  dropped  some  form  of  deadly 
souvenir  we  judged,  for  we  saw  a  jet  of  black 
smoke  go  geysering  up  from  a  woodland  where 
a  German  corps  commander  had  his  field  head- 
quarters, just  after  the  airship  passed  over 
that  particular  patch  of  timber.  As  it  swirled 
[251] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


down  the  wind  in  our  direction  the  vigilant 
balloon  guns  again  got  its  range,  and,  to  the 
throbbing  tune  of  their  twin  boomings,  it 
ducked  and  dodged  away,  executing  irregular 
and  hurried  upward  spirals  until  the  cloud- 
fleece  swallowed  it  up. 

The  driver  of  that  monoplane  was  a  per- 
sistent chap.  I  am  inclined  to  believe  he  was 
the  selfsame  aviator  who  ventured  well  inside 
the  German  lines  the  following  morning. 
While  at  breakfast  in  the  prefecture  at  Laon 
we  heard  the  cannoneer-sharpshooters  when 
they  opened  on  him;  and  as  we  ran  to  the  win- 
dows— we  Americans,  I  mean,  the  German 
officers  breakfasting  with  us  remaining  to  finish 
their  coffee — we  saw  a  colonel,  whom  we  had 
met  the  night  before,  sitting  on  a  bench  in  the 
eld  prefecture  flower  garden  and  looking  up 
into  the  skies  through  the  glasses  that  every 
German  officer,  of  whatsoever  degree,  carries 
with  him  at  all  times. 

He  looked  and  looked;  then  he  lowered  his 
glasses  and  put  them  back  into  their  case, 
and  took  up  the  book  he  had  been  reading. 

"He  got  away  again,"  said  the  colonel  re- 
gretfully, seeing  us  at  the  window.  "Plucky 
fellow,  that!  I  hope  we  kill  him  soon.  The 
airmen  say  he  is  a  Frenchman,  but  my  guess 
is  that  he  is  English."  And  then  he  went  on 
reading. 

Getting  back  to  the  afternoon  before,  I  must 
add  that  it  was  not  a  bomb  which  the  flying 
[2521 


IN  THE  TRENCHES  BEFORE  RHEIMS 

man  threw  into  the  edge  of  the  woods.  He 
had  a  surprise  for  his  German  adversaries  that 
day.  Soon  after  we  left  the  stand  of  the 
field  guns  a  civilian  Red  Cross  man  halted 
our  machines  to  show  us  a  new  device 
for  killing  men.  It  was  a  steel  dart,  of  the 
length  and  thickness  of  a  fountain  pen,  and  of 
much  the  same  aspect.  It  was  pointed  like 
a  needle  at  one  end,  and  at  the  other  was 
fashioned  into  a  tiny  rudder  arrangement, 
the  purpose  of  this  being  to  hold  it  upright — 
point  downward — as  it  descended.  It  was  an 
innocent-looking  device — that  dart;  but  it  was 
deadlier  than  it  seemed. 

"That  flyer  at  whom  our  guns  were  firing  a 
while  ago  dropped  this,"  explained  the  civilian, 
"He  pitched  out  a  bomb  that  must  have  con- 
tained hundreds  of  these  darts;  and  the  bomb 
was  timed  to  explode  a  thousand  or  more  feet 
above  the  earth  and  scatter  the  darts.  Some 
of  them  fell  into  a  cavalry  troop  on  the  road 
leading  to  La  Fere. 

"Hurt  anyone?  Ach,  but  yes!  Hurt  many 
and  killed  several — both  men  and  horses. 
One  dart  hit  a  trooper  on  top  of  his  head.  It 
went  through  his  helmet,  through  his  skull, 
his  brain,  his  neck,  his  body,  his  leg — all  the 
way  through  him  lengthwise  it  went.  It  came 
out  of  his  leg,  split  open  his  horse's  flank,  and 
stuck  in  the  hard  road. 

"I  myself  saw  the  man  afterward.  He 
died  so  quickly  that  his  hand  still  held  his 
[2531 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


bridle  rein  after  he  fell  from  the  saddle;  and 
the  horse  dragged  him — his  corpse,  rather — 
many  feet  before  the  fingers  relaxed." 

The  officers  who  were  with  us  were  tre- 
mendously interested — not  interested,  mind 
you,  in  the  death  of  that  trooper,  spitted 
from  the  heavens  by  a  steel  pencil,  but  in- 
terested in  the  thing  that  had  done  the  work. 
It  was  the  first  dart  they  had  seen.  Indeed, 
I  think  until  then  this  weapon  had  not  been 
used  against  the  Germans  in  this  particular 
area  of  the  western  theater  of  war.  These 
officers  passed  it  about,  fingering  it  in  turn, 
and  commenting  on  the  design  of  it  and  the 
possibilities  of  its  use. 

"Typically  French,"  the  senior  of  them  said 
at  length,  handing  it  back  to  its  owner,  the 
Red  Cross  man — "a  very  clever  idea  too;  but 
it  might  be  bettered,  I  think."  He  pondered 
a  moment,  then  added,  with  the  racial  com- 
placence that  belongs  to  a  German  military 
man  when  he  considers  military  matters:  "No 
doubt  we  shall  adopt  the  notion;  but  we'll 
improve  on  the  pattern  and  the  method  of 
discharging  it.  The  French  usually  lead  the 
way  in  aerial  inventions,  but  the  Germans 
invariably  perfect  them." 

The  day  wound  up  and  rounded  out  most 
fittingly  with  a  trip  eastward  along  the  lines 
to  the  German  siege  investments  in  front  of 
Rheims.  We  ran  for  a  while  through  damaged 
French  hamlets,  each  with  its  soldier  garrison 
[2541 


IN    THE    TRENCHES    BEFORE    RKEIMS 

to  make  up  for  the  inhabitants  who  had  fled; 
and  then,  a  Httle  later,  through  a  less  well- 
populated  district.  In  the  fields,  for  long 
stretches,  nothing  stirred  except  pheasants, 
feeding  on  the  neglected  grain,  and  big,  noisy 
magpies.  The  roads  were  empty,  too,  except 
that  there  were  wrecked  shells  of  automobiles 
and  bloated  carcasses  of  dead  troop  horses. 
When  the  Germans,  in  their  campaigning, 
smash  up  an  automobile — and  traveling  at  the 
rate  they  do  there  must  be  many  smashed — 
they  capsize  it  at  the  roadside,  strip  it  of  its 
tires,  draw  off  the  precious  gasoline,  pour  oil 
over  it  and  touch  a  match  to  it.  What  re- 
mains offers  no  salvage  to  friend,  or  enemy 
either. 

The  horses  rot  v»^here  they  drop  unless  the 
country  people  choose  to  put  the  bodies  under- 
ground. We  counted  the  charred  cadavers  of 
fifteen  automobiles  and  twice  as  many  dead 
horses  during  that  ride.  The  smell  of  horse- 
flesh spoiled  the  good  air.  When  passing 
through  a  wood  the  smell  was  always  heavier. 
We  hoped  it  was  only  dead  horses  we  smelled 
there. 

When  there  has  been  fighting  in  France 
or  Belgium,  almost  any  thicket  will  give  up 
hideous  grisly  secrets  to  the  man  who  goes 
searching  there.  Men  sorely  wounded  in  the 
open  share  one  trait  at  least  with  the  lower 
animals.  The  dying  creature — whether  man 
or  beast — dreads  to  lie  and  die  in  the  naked 
[2551 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


field.  It  drags  itself  in  among  the  trees  if  it 
has  the  strength, 

I  believe  every  woodland  in  northern  France 
was  a  poison  place,  and  remained  so  until  the 
freezing  of  winter  sealed  up  its  abominations 
under  ice  and  frost. 

Nearing  Rheims  we  turned  into  a  splendid 
straight  highway  bordered  by  trees,  where  the 
late  afternoon  sunlight  filtered  through  the  dead 
leaves,  which  still  hung  from  the  boughs  and 
dappled  the  yellow  road  with  black  splotches, 
until  it  made  you  think  of  jaguar  pelts.  Mid- 
way of  our  course  here  we  met  troops  moving 
toward  us  in  force.  First,  as  usual,  came  scouts 
on  bicycles  and  motorcycles.  One  young  chap 
had  woven  sheaves  of  dahlias  and  red  peonies 
into  the  frame  of  his  v/heel,  and  through  the 
clump  of  quivering  blossoms  the  barrel  of  his 
rifle  showed,  like  a  black  snake  in  a  bouquet. 
He  told  us  that  troops  were  coming  behind, 
going  to  the  extreme  right  wing — a  good  many 
thousands  of  troops,  he  thought.  Ordinarily 
Uhlans  would  have  followed  behind  the  bicycle 
men,  but  this  time  a  regiment  of  Brunswick 
Hussars  formed  the  advance  guard,  riding  four 
abreast  and  making  a  fine  show,  what  with  their 
laced  gray  jackets  and  their  lanes  of  nodding 
lances,  and  their  tall  woolly  busbies,  each  with 
its  grinning  brass  death's-head  set  into  the 
front  of  it. 

There  was  a  blithe  young  officer  who  in- 
sisted on  wheeling  out  of  the  line  and  halting 


IN  THE  TRENCHES  BEFORE  RHEIMS 

US,  and  passing  the  time  of  day  with  us.  I  im- 
agine he  wanted  to  exercise  his  small  stock  of 
English  words.  Well,  it  needed  the  exercise. 
The  skull-and-bones  poison  label  on  his  cap 
made  a  wondrous  contrast  with  the  smiling  eyes 
and  the  long,  humorous,  wTinkled-up  nose 
below  it. 

"A  miserable  country,"  he  said,  with  a 
sweep  of  his  arm  which  comprehended  all 
Northwestern  Europe,  from  the  German  bor- 
der to  the  sea — "so  little  there  is  to  eat!  My 
belly — she  is  mostly  empty  always.  But  on 
the  yesterday  I  have  the  much  great  fortune. 
I  buy  me  a  swine — what  you  call  himi^ — a 
pork.f^  Ah,  yes;  a  pig.  I  buy  me  a  pig.  He 
is  a  living  pig;  very  noisy,  as  you  say — very 
loud.  I  bring  him  twenty  kilometers  in  an 
automobile,  and  all  the  time  he  struggle  to  be 
free;  and  he  cry  out  all  the  time.  It  is  very 
droll — not? — me  and  the  living  pig,  which 
ride,  both  together,  twenty  kilometers!" 

We  took  some  letters  from  him  to  his  mother 
and  sweetheart,  to  be  mailed  when  we  got 
back  on  German  soil ;  and  he  spurred  on,  beam- 
ing back  at  us  and  waving  his  free  hand  over 
his  head. 

For  half  an  hour  or  so,  we,  traveling  rap- 
idly, passed  the  column,  which  was  made  up 
of  cavalry,  artillery  and  baggage  trains.  I  sup- 
pose the  infantry  was  going  by  another  road. 
The  dragoons  sang  German  marching  songs 
as  they  rode  by,  but  the  artillerymen  were  a 
[257] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


dour  and  silent  lot  for  the  most  part.  Re- 
peatedly I  noticed  that  the  men  who  worked 
the  big  German  guns  were  rarely  so  cheerful 
as  the  men  who  belonged  to  the  other  wings 
of  the  service;  certainly  it  was  true  in  this  in- 
stance. 

We  halted  two  miles  north  of  Rheims  in 
the  front  line  of  the  German  works.  Here 
was  a  little  shattered  village;  its  name,  I 
believe,  was  Brimont.  And  here,  also,  com- 
manding the  road,  stood  a  ruined  fortress 
of  an  obsolete  last-century  pattern.  Shellfire 
had  battered  it  into  a  gruel  of  shattered  red 
masonry;  but  German  officers  were  camped 
within  its  more  habitable  parts,  and  light  guns 
were  mounted  in  the  moat. 

The  trees  thereabout  had  been  mowed  down 
by  the  French  artillery  from  within  the  city, 
so  that  the  highway  was  littered  with  their 
tops.  Also,  the  explosives  had  dug  big  gouges 
in  the  earth.  Wherever  you  looked  you  saw 
that  the  soil  was  full  of  small,  raggedy  craters. 
Shrapnel  was  dropping  intermittently  in  the 
vicinity;  therefore  we  left  our  cars  behind  the 
shelter  of  the  ancient  fort  and  proceeded  cau- 
tiously afoot  until  we  reached  the  frontmost 
trenches. 

Evidently  the  Germans  counted  on  staying 
there  a  good  while.  The  men  had  dug  out 
caves  in  the  walls  of  the  trenches,  bedding 
them  with  straw  and  fitting  them  with  doors 
taken  from  the  wreckage  of  the  h^i'ses  of  the 
[2581 


IN  THE  TRENCHES  BEFOUE  RHEIMS 

village.  We  inspected  one  of  these  shelters. 
It  had  earthen  walls  and  a  sod  roof,  fairly 
water-tight ,  and  a  green  window  shutter  to  rest 
against  the  entrance  for  a  windbreak.  Six 
men  slept  here,  and  the  wag  of  the  squad  had 
taken  chalk  and  lettered  the  words  "Kaiserhof 
Cafe"  on  the  shutter. 

The  trenches  were  from  seven  to  eight  feet 
deep;  but  by  climbing  up  into  the  little  scarps 
of  the  sharpshooters  and  resting  our  elbows 
in  niches  in  the  earth,  meantime  keeping  our 
heads  down  to  escape  the  attentions  of  certain 
Frenchmen  who  were  reported  to  be  in  a  wood 
half  a  mile  away,  we  could,  with  the  aid  of 
our  glasses,  make  out  the  buildings  in  Rheims, 
some  of  which  were  then  on  fire — particularly 
the  great  Cathedral. 

Viewed  from  that  distance  it  did  not  appear 
to  be  badly  damaged.  One  of  the  towers  had 
apparently  been  shorn  away  and  the  roof  of 
the  nave  was  burned — we  could  tell  that. 
We  were  too  far  away  of  course  to  judge  of  the 
injury  to  the  carvings  and  to  the  great  rose 
window. 

Already  during  that  week,  from  many 
sources,  we  had  heard  the  Germans'  version 
of  the  shelling  of  Rheims  Cathedral,  their 
claim  being  that  they  purposely  spared  the 
pile  from  the  bombardment  until  they  found 
the  defenders  had  signal  men  in  the  towers; 
that  twice  they  sent  ofl&cers,  under  flags  of 
truce,  to  urge  the  French  to  withdraw  their 
[2591 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


signalers;  and  only  fired  on  the  building  when 
both  these  warnings  had  been  disregarded, 
ceasing  to  fire  as  soon  as  they  had  driven  the 
enemy  from  the  towers. 

I  do  not  vouch  for  this  story;  but  we  heard 
it  very  frequently.  Now,  from  one  of  the 
young  officers  who  had  escorted  us  into  the 
trench,  we  were  hearing  it  ail  over  again,  with 
elaborations,  when  a  shrapnel  shell  from  the 
town  dropped  and  burst  not  far  behind  us, 
and  rifle  bullets  began  to  plump  into  the 
earthen  bank  a  little  to  the  right  of  us;  so  we 
promptly  went  away  from  there. 

We  were  noncombatants  and  nowise  con- 
cerned in  the  existing  controversy;  but  we 
remembered  the  plaintive  words  of  the  Chinese 
Minister  at  Brussels  when  he  called  on  our 
Minister — Brand  Whitlock — to  ascertain  what 
Whitlock  would  advise  doing  in  case  the  ad- 
vancing Germans  fired  on  the  city.  Whitlock 
suggested  to  his  Oriental  brother  that  he  retire 
to  his  ofiicial  residence  and  hoist  the  flag  of 
his  country  over  it,  thereby  making  it  neutral 
and  protected  territory. 

"But,  Mister  Whitlock,"  murmured  the 
puzzled  Chinaman,  "the  cannon — he  has  no 
eyes!" 

We  rode  back  to  Laon  through  the  falling 
dusk.  The  western  sky  was  all  a  deep  saffron 
pink^the  color  of  a  salmon's  belly — and  we 
could  hear  the  constant  blaspheming  of  the 
big  siege  guns,  taking  up  the  evening  cannonade 
[260] 


IN    THE    TRENCHES    BEFORE    RHEIMS 

along  the  center.  Pretty  soon  we  caught  up 
with  the  column  that  was  headed  for  the  right 
wing.  At  that  hour  it  was  still  in  motion, 
which  probably  meant  forced  marching  for  an 
indefinite  time.  Viewed  against  the  sunset 
yellow,  the  figures  of  the  dragoons  stood  up 
black  and  clean,  as  conventionalized  and  reg- 
ular as  though  they  had  all  been  stenciled  on 
that  background.  Seeing  next  the  round, 
spiked  helmets  of  the  cannoneers  outlined  in 
that  weird  half-light,  I  knew  of  what  those 
bobbing  heads  reminded  me.  They  were  like 
pictures  of  Roman  centurions. 

Within  a  few  minutes  the  afterglow  lost  its 
yellowish  tone  and  burned  as  a  deep  red  flare. 
As  we  swung  off  into  a  side  road  the  columns 
were  headed  right  into  that  redness,  and  turning 
to  black  cinder-shapes  as  they  rode.  It  was  as 
though  they  marched  into  a  fiery  furnace,  tread- 
ing the  crimson  paths  of  glory — which  are  not 
glorious  and  probably  never  were,  but  which 
lead  most  unerringly  to  the  grave. 

A  week  later,  when  we  learned  what  had 
happened  on  the  right  wing,  and  of  how  the 
Germans  had  fared  there  under  the  battering 
of  the  Allies,  the  thought  of  that  open  furnace 
door  came  back  to  me.  I  think  of  it  yet — 
often. 


261 


CHAPTER  XI 
WAR  DE  LUXE 


I  THINK,"  said  a  colonel  of  the  ordnance 
department  as  we  came  out  into  the  open 
after  a  good  but  a  hurried  and  fly-ridden 
breakfast — "I  think,"  he  said  in  his  ex- 
cellent Saxonized  English,  "that  it  would  be 
as  well  to  look  at  our  telephone  exchange 
first  of  all.  It  perhaps  might  prove  of  some 
small  interest  to  you."  With  that  he  led  the 
way  through  a  jumble  of  corridors  to  a  far  cor- 
ner of  the  Prefecture  of  Laon,  perching  high 
on  the  Hill  of  Laon  and  forming  for  the  moment 
the  keystone  of  the  arch  of  the  German  center. 
So  that  was  how  the  most  crowded  day  in  a 
reasonably  well-crowded  newspaperman's  life  be- 
gan for  me — with  a  visit  to  a  room  which  had  in 
other  days  been  somebody's  reception  parlor. 
We  came  upon  twelve  soldier-operators  sitting 
before  portable  switchboards  with  metal  trans- 
mitters clamped  upon  their  heads,  giving  and  tak- 
ing messages  to  and  from  all  the  corners  and 
[2621 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


crannies  of  the  mid-battle-front.  This  little  room 
was  the  solar  plexus  of  the  army.  To  it  all  the 
tingling  nerves  of  the  mighty  organism  ran  and 
in  it  all  the  ganglia  centered.  x\t  two  sides  of 
the  room  the  walls  were  laced  with  silk-covered 
wires  appliqued  as  thickly  and  as  closely  and 
as  intricately  as  the  threads  in  old  point  lace, 
and  over  these  wires  the  gray-coated  operators 
could  talk — and  did  talk  pretty  constantly — 
with  all  the  trenches  and  all  the  batteries  and 
all  the  supply  camps  and  with  the  generals 
of  brigades  and  of  divisions  and  of  corps. 

One  wire  ran  upstairs  to  the  Over-General's 
sleeping  quarters  and  ended,  so  we  were  told, 
in  a  receiver  that  hung  upon  the  headboard  of 
his  bed.  Another  stretched,  by  relay  points, 
to  Berlin,  and  still  another  ran  to  the  head- 
quarters of  the  General  Staff  where  the  Kaiser 
was,  somewhere  down  the  right  wing;  and  so 
on  and  so  forth.  If  war  is  a  business  these 
times  instead  of  a  chivalric  calling,  then  surely 
this  was  the  main  office  and  clearing  house  of 
the  business. 

To  our  novice  eyes  the  wires  seemed  snarled 
— snarled  inextricably,  hopelessly,  eternally — 
and  we  said  as  much,  but  the  ordnance  colonel 
said  behind  this  apparent  disorder  a  most 
careful  and  particular  orderliness  was  hidden 
away.  Given  an  hour's  notice,  these  busy  men 
who  wore  those  steel  vises  clamped  upon  their 
ears  could  disconnect  the  lines,  pull  down  and 
reel  in  the  wires,  pack  the  batteries  and  the 
[  263  ] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


exchanges,  and  have  the  entire  outfit  loaded 
upon  automobiles  for  speedy  transmission  else- 
where. Having  seen  what  I  had  seen  of  the 
German  military  system,  I  could  not  find  it 
in  my  heart  to  doubt  this.  Miracles  had  al- 
ready become  commonplaces;  what  might  have 
been  epic  once  was  incidental  now.  I  heark- 
ened and  believed. 

At  his  command  a  sergeant  plugged  in  cer- 
tain stops  upon  a  keyboard  and  then  when 
the  Colonel,  taking  a  hand  telephone  up  from 
a  table,  had  talked  into  it  in  German  he  passed 
it  into  my  hands. 

"The  captain  at  the  other  end  of  the  line 
knows  English,"  he  said.  "I've  just  told  him 
you  v/ish  to  speak  v/ith  him  for  a  minute." 

I  pressed  the  rubber  disk  to  my  ear. 

"Hello!"  I  said. 

"Hello!"  came  back  the  thin-strained  an- 
swer. "This  is  such  and  such  a  trench" — 
giving  the  number — "in  front  of  Cerny.  What 
do  you  want  to  know?" 

"What's  the  news  there?"  I  stammered 
fatuously. 

A  pleasant  little  laugh  tinkled  through  the 
strainer. 

"Oh,  it's  fairly  quiet  now,"  said  the  voice. 
"Yesterday  afternoon  shrapnel  fire  rather 
mussed  us  up,  but  to-day  nothing  has  hap- 
pened. We're  just  lying  quiet  and  enjoying 
the  fine  weather.  We've  had  much  rain  lately 
and  my  men  are  enjoying  the  change." 
[264] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


So  that  was  all  the  talk  I  had  with  a  man 
who  had  for  weeks  been  living  in  a  hole  in  the 
ground  with  a  ditch  for  an  exercise  ground 
and  the  brilliant  prospects  of  a  violent  death 
for  his  hourly  and  daily  entertainment.  After- 
ward when  it  was  too  late  I  thought  of  a 
number  of  leading  questions  which  I  should 
have  put  to  that  captain.  Undoubtedly  there 
was  a  good  story  in  him  could  you  get  it  out. 

We  came  through  a  courtyard  at  the  north 
side  of  the  building,  and  the  courtyard  was 
crowded  with  automobiles  of  all  the  known 
European  sizes  and  patterns  and  shapes — auto- 
mobiles for  scout  duty,  with  saw-edged  steel 
prows  curving  up  over  the  drivers'  seats  to 
catch  and  cut  dangling  wires;  automobiles 
fitted  as  traveling  pharmacies  and  needing 
only  red-and-green  lights  to  be  regular  pre- 
scription drug  stores;  automobile-ambulances 
rigged  with  stretchers  and  first-aid  kits;  auto- 
mobiles for  carrying  ammunition  and  capable 
of  moving  at  tremendous  speed  for  tremendous 
distances ;  automobile  machine  guns  or  machine- 
gun  automobiles,  just  as  suits  you;  automobile 
cannon;  and  an  automobile  mail  wagon,  all 
holed  inside,  like  honeycomb,  with  two  field- 
postmen  standing  up  in  it,  back  to  back, 
sorting  out  the  contents  of  snugly  packed 
pouches;  and  every  third  letter  was  not  a 
letter,  strictly  speaking,  at  all,  but  a  small 
flat  parcel  containing  chocolate  or  cigars  or 
handkerchiefs  or  socks  or  even  light  sweaters — 
[2651 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


such  gifts  as  might  be  sent  to  the  soldiers, 
stamp-free,  from  any  part  of  the  German  Em- 
pire. I  wonder  how  men  managed  to  wage  war 
in  the  days  before  the  automobile. 

Two  waiting  cars  received  our  party  and 
our  guides  and  our  drivers,  and  we  went  cork- 
screwing down  the  hill,  traversing  crooked 
ways  that  were  astonishingly  full  of  German 
soldiers  and  astonishingly  free  of  French  towns- 
people. Either  the  citizens  kept  to  their 
closed-up  houses  or,  having  run  away  at  the 
coming  of  the  enemy,  they  had  not  yet  dared 
to  return,  although  so  far  as  I  might  tell  there 
was  no  danger  of  their  being  mistreated  by 
the  gray-backs.  Reaching  the  plain  which  is 
below  the  city  we  streaked  westward,  our  des- 
tination being  the  field  wireless  station. 

Nothing  happened  on  the  way  except  that 
we  overtook  a  file  of  slightly  wounded  prison- 
ers who,  having  been  treated  at  the  front,  were 
now  bound  for  a  prison  in  a  convent  yard, 
where  they  would  stay  until  a  train  carried 
them  off  to  Miinster  or  Diisseldorf  for  confine- 
ment until  the  end  of  the  war.  I  counted  them. 
— two  English  Tommies,  two  French  officers, 
one  lone  Belgian — how  he  got  that  far  down 
into  France  nobody  could  guess — and  twenty- 
eight  French  cannoneers  and  infantrymen,  in- 
cluding some  North  Africans.  Every  man  Jack 
of  them  was  bandaged  either  about  the  head 
or  about  the  arms,  or  else  he  favored  an  injured 
leg  as  he  hobbled  slowly  on.  Eight  guards 
[2661 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


were  nursing  them  along;  their  bayonets  were 
socketed  in  their  carbine  barrels.  No  doubt 
the  magazines  of  the  carbines  were  packed 
with  those  neat  brass  capsules  which  carry 
doses  of  potential  death ;  but  the  guards,  except 
for  the  moral  effect  of  the  thing,  might  just 
as  well  have  been  bare-handed.  None  of  the 
prisoners  could  have  run  away  even  had  he 
been  so  minded.  The  poor  devils  were  almost 
past  walking,  let  alone  running.  They  wouldn't 
even  look  up  as  we  went  by  them. 

The  day  is  done  of  the  courier  who  rode 
horseback  with  orders  in  his  belt  and  was 
winged  in  mid-flight;  and  the  day  of  the 
secret  messenger  who  tried  to  creep  through 
the  hostile  picket  lines  with  cipher  dispatches 
in  his  shoe,  and  was  captured  and  ordered 
shot  at  sunrise,  is  gone,  too,  except  in  Civil 
War  melodramas.  Modern  military  science 
has  wiped  them  out  along  with  most  of  the 
other  picturesque  fol-de-rols  of  the  old  game 
of  war.  Bands  no  longer  play  the  forces  into 
the  fight — indeed  I  have  seen  no  more  bands 
afield  with  the  dun-colored  files  of  the  Ger- 
mans than  I  might  count  on  the  fingers  of  my 
two  hands;  and  flags,  except  on  rare  show-off 
occasions,  do  not  float  above  the  heads  of  the 
columns;  and  officers  dress  as  nearly  as  possible 
like  common  soldiers;  and  the  courier's  work 
is  done  with  much  less  glamour  but  with  in- 
finitely greater  dispatch  and  certainty  by  the 
telephone,  and  by  the  aeroplane  man,  and 
[2G71 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


most  of  all  by  the  air  currents  of  the  wireless 
equipment.  We  missed  the  gallant  courier, 
but  then  the  wireless  was  worth  seeing  too. 

It  stood  in  a  trampled  turnip  field  not  very 
far  beyond  the  ruined  Porte  St.  Martin  at  the 
end  of  the  Rue  St.  Martin,  and  before  we  came 
to  it  we  passed  the  Monument  des  Instituteurs, 
erected  in  1899 — as  the  inscription  upon  it  told 
us — by  a  grateful  populace  to  the  memory  of 
three  school  teachers  of  Laon  who,  for  having 
raised  a  revolt  of  students  and  civilians  against 
the  invader  in  the  Franco-Prussian  War,  were 
taken  and  bound  and  shot  against  a  wall,  in 
accordance  with  the  system  of  dealing  with 
ununiformed  enemies  which  the  Germans  de- 
veloped hereabouts  in  1870  and  perfected  here- 
abouts in  1914.  A  faded  wTeath,  which  evi- 
dently was  weeks  old,  lay  at  the  bronze  feet 
of  the  three  figures.  But  the  institute  behind 
the  monument  was  an  institute  no  longer.  It 
had  become,  over  night  as  it  were,  a  lazaret 
for  the  wounded.  Above  its  doors  the  Red 
Cross  flag  and  the  German  flag  were  crossed — 
emblems  of  present  uses  and  present  propri- 
etorship. Also  many  convalescent  German 
soldiers  sunned  themselves  upon  the  railing 
about  the  statue.  They  seemed  entirely  at 
home.  When  the  Germans  take  a  town  they 
mark  it  with  their  own  mark,  as  cattlemen  in 
Texas  used  to  mark  a  captured  maverick; 
after  which  to  all  intents  it  becomes  German. 
We  halted  a  moment  here. 
[  268  ] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


"That's  French  enough  for  you,"  said  the 
young  officer  who  was  riding  with  us,  turning 
in  his  seat  to  speak — "putting  up  a  monument 
to  glorify  three  francs-tireurs.  In  Germany 
the  people  would  not  be  allowed  to  do  such  a 
thing.  But  it  is  not  humanly  conceivable 
that  they  would  have  such  a  wish.  We  revere 
soldiers  who  die  for  the  Fatherland,  not 
men  who  refuse  to  enlist  when  the  call  comes 
and  yet  take  up  arms  to  make  a  guerrilla 
warfare." 

Which  remark,  considering  the  circum- 
stances and  other  things,  was  sufficiently 
typical  for  all  purposes,  as  I  thought  at  the 
time  and  still  think.  You  see  I  had  come  to 
the  place  where  I  could  understand  a  German 
soldier's  national  and  racial  point  of  view, 
though  I  doubt  his  ability  ever  of  understanding 
mine.  To  him,  now,  old  John  Burns  of  Gettys- 
burg, going  out  in  his  high,  high  hat  and  his 
long,  long  coat  to  fight  with  the  boys  would 
never,  could  never  be  the  heroic  figure  which 
he  is  in  the  American  imagination;  he  would 
have  been  a  meddlesome  malefactor  deserving 
of  immediate  death.  For  1778  write  it  1914, 
and  Molly  Pitcher  serving  at  the  guns  would 
have  been  in  no  better  case  before  a  German 
court-martial.  Conceivably  a  Prussian  Stone- 
wall Jackson  would  give  orders  to  kill  a 
French  Barbara  Frietchie,  but  if  be  spared 
her  life,  assuredly  he  would  lock  her  up  in 
a  fortress  where  she  could  not  hoist  her  coun- 
[2691 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


try's  flag  nor  invite  anybody  to  shoot  her 
gray  head.  For  you  must  know  that  the  Ger- 
man who  ordinarily  brims  over  with  that  emo- 
tion which,  lacking  a  better  name  for  it,  we 
call  sentiment,  drains  all  the  sentiment  out  of 
his  soul  when  he  takes  his  gun  in  his  hand  and 
goes  to  war. 

Among  the  frowzy  turnip  tops  two  big  dull 
gray  automobiles  were  stranded,  like  large 
hulks  in  a  small  green  sea.  Alongside  them 
a  devil's  darning-needle  of  a  wireless  mast 
stuck  up,  one  hundred  and  odd  feet,  toward 
the  sky.  It  was  stayed  with  many  steel  guy 
ropes,  like  the  center  pole  of  a  circus  top. 
It  was  of  the  collapsible  model  and  might  there- 
fore be  telescoped  into  itself  and  taken  down 
in  twenty  minutes,  so  we  were  informed  pride- 
fully  by  the  captain  in  charge;  and  from  its 
needle-pointed  tip  the  messages  caught  out 
of  the  ether  came  down  by  wire  conductors 
to  the  interior  of  one  of  the  stalled  auto- 
mobiles and  there  were  noted  down  and,  when- 
ever possible,  translated  by  two*  soldier-oper- 
ators, who  perched  on  wooden  stools  among 
batteries  and  things,  for  which  I  know  not 
the  technical  names.  The  spitty  snarl  of  the 
apparatus  filled  the  air  for  rods  roundabout. 
It  made  you  think  of  a  million  gritty  slate 
pencils  squeaking  over  a  million  slates  all  to- 
gether. We  were  permitted  to  take  up  the 
receivers  and  listen  to  a  faint  scratching  sound 
which  must  have  come  from  a  long  way  off. 
[2701 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


Indeed  the  officer  told  us  that  it  was  a  message 
from  the  enemy  that  we  heard. 

"Our  men  just  picked  it  up,"  he  explained; 
"we  think  it  must  come  from  a  French  wireless 
station  across  the  river.  Naturally  we  cannot 
understand  it,  any  more  than  they  can  under- 
stand our  messages — they're  all  in  code,  you 
know.  Every  day  or  two  we  change  our  code, 
and  I  presume  they  do  too." 

Two  of  our  party  had  unshipped  their  cam- 
eras by  now,  for  the  pass  which  we  carried 
entitled  us,  among  other  important  things,  to 
commandeer  that  precious  fluid,  gasoline,  when- 
ever needed,  and  to  take  photographs;  but 
we  were  asked  to  make  no  shapshots  here. 
We  gathered  that  there  were  certain  reasons 
not  unconnected  with  secret  military  usage 
why  we  might  not  take  away  with  us  plates 
bearing  pictures  of  the  field  wireless.  In  the 
main,  though,  remarkably  few  restrictions  were 
laid  upon  us  that  day.  Once  or  twice,  very 
casually,  somebody  asked  us  to  refrain  from 
writing  about  this  thing  or  that  thing  which 
we  had  seen;  but  that  was  all. 

In  a  corner  of  the  turnip  field  close  up  to 
the  road  were  mounds  of  fresh-turned '  clay, 
and  so  many  of  them  were  there  and  so  closely 
were  they  spaced  and  for  so  considerable  a  dis- 
tance did  they  stretch  along,  they  made  two 
long  yellow  ribs  above  the  herbage.  At  close 
intervals  small  wooden  crosses  were  stuck  up 
in  the  rounded  combs  of  earth  so  that  the 
1271] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


crosses  formed  a  sort  of  irregular  fence.  A 
squad  of  soldiers  were  digging  more  holes  in 
the  tough  earth.  Their  shovel  blades  flashed 
in  the  sunlight  and  the  clods  flew  up  in  showers. 

"We  have  many  buried  over  there,"  said 
an  artillery  captain,  seeing  that  I  watched  the 
grave  diggers,  "a  general  among  them  and 
other  officers.  It  is  there  we  bury  those  who 
die  in  the  Institute  hospital.  Every  day  more 
die,  and  so  each  morning  trenches  are  made 
ready  for  those  who  will  die  during  that  day. 
A  good  friend  of  mine  is  over  there;  he  was 
buried  day  before  yesterday.  I  sat  up  late 
last  night  writing  to  his  wife — or  perhaps  I 
should  say  his  widow.  They  had  been  married 
only  a  few  weeks  when  the  call  came.  It  will 
be  very  hard  on  her." 

He  did  not  name  the  general  who  lay  over 
yonder,  nor  did  we  ask  him  the  name.  To 
ask  would  not  have  been  etiquette,  and  for 
him  to  answer  would  have  been  worse.  Rarely 
in  our  wanderings  did  we  find  a  German  soldier 
of  whatsoever  rank  who  referred  to  his  superior 
officer  by  name.  He  merely  said  "My  cap- 
tain" or  "Our  colonel."  And  this  was  of  a 
piece  with  the  plan — not  entirely  confined  to 
the  Germans — of  making  a  secret  of  losses  of 
commanders  and  movements  of  commands. 

We   went   thence   then,   the   distance   being 

perhaps  three  miles  by  road  and  not  above 

eight  minutes  by  automobile  at  the  rate  we 

traveled    to   an   aviation   camp   at   the   back 

[272] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


side  of  the  town.  Here  was  very  much  to  see, 
including  many  aeroplanes  of  sorts  domiciled 
under  canvas  hangars  and  a  cheerful,  chatty, 
jiospitable  group  of  the  most  famous  aviators 
in  the  German  army — lean,  keen  young  men 
all  of  them — and  a  sample  specimen  of  the 
radish-shaped  bomb  which  these  gentlemen 
carry  aloft  with  the  intent  of  dropping  it 
upon  their  enemies  when  occasion  shall  offer. 
Each  of  us  in  turn  solemnly  hefted  the  bomb 
to  feel  its  weight.  I  should  guess  it  weighed 
thirty  pounds — say,  ten  pounds  for  the  case 
and  twenty  pounds  for  its  load  of  fearsome 
ingredients.  Finally,  yet  foremost,  we  were 
invited  to  inspect  that  thing  which  is  the  pride 
and  the  brag  of  this  particular  arm  of  the 
German  Army — a  balloon-cannon,  so  called. 

The  balloon-gun  of  this  size  is — or  was  at 
the  date  Vv^hen  I  saw  it — an  exclusively  German 
institution.  I  believe  the  Allies  have  balloon- 
guns  too,  but  theirs  are  smaller,  according  to 
what  the  Germans  say.  This  one  was  mounted 
on  a  squatty  half-turret  at  the  tail  end  of  an 
armored-steel  truck.  It  had  a  mechanism  as 
daintily  adjusted  as  a  lady's  watch  and  much 
more  accurate,  and  when  being  towed  by  its 
attendant  automobile,  which  has  harnessed 
within  it  the  power  of  a  hundred  and  odd  draft 
horses,  it  has  been  known  to  cover  sixty 
English  miles  in  an  hour,  for  all  that  its  weight 
is  that  of  very  many  loaded  vans. 

The  person  in  authority  here  was  a  youthful 
[273] 


PATHS   OF    GLORY 


and  blithe  lieutenant — an  Iron  Cross  man — 
with  pale,  shallow  blue  eyes  and  a  head  of  bright 
blond  hair.  He  spun  one  small  wheel  to  show 
how  his  pet's  steel  nose  might  be  elevated 
almost  straight  upward;  then  turned  another 
to  show  how  the  gun  might  be  swung,  as  on  a 
pivot,  this  way  and  that  to  command  the  range 
of  the  entire  horizon,  and  he  concluded  the 
performance,  with  the  aid  of  several  husky 
lads  in  begrimed  gray,  by  going  through  the 
pantomime  of  loading  with  a  long  yellow  five- 
inch  shell  from  the  magazine  behind  him,  and 
pretending  to  fire,  meanwhile  explaining  that  he 
could  send  one  shot  aloft  every  six  seconds 
and  with  each  shot  reach  a  maximum  altitude 
of  between  seven  and  eight  thousand  feet. 
Altogether  it  was  a  very  pretty  sight  to  see 
and  most  edifying.  Likewise  it  took  on  an 
added  interest  when  we  learned  that  the  blue- 
eyed  youth  and  his  brother  of  a  twin  balloon- 
cannon  at  the  front  of  Laon  had  during  the 
preceding  three  weeks  brought  down  four  of 
the  enemy's  airmen,  and  were  exceedingly 
hopeful  of  fattening  their  joint  average  before 
the  present  week  had  ended. 

After  that  we  took  photographs  ad  lib.,  and 
McCutcheon  had  a  trip  with  Ingold,  a  great 
aviator,  in  a  biplane,  which  the  Germans  call 
a  double-decker,  as  distinguished  from  the  Tauhe 
or  monoplane,  with  its  birdlilce  wings  and 
curved  tail  rudder-piece.  Just  as  they  came 
down,  after  a  circular  spin  over  the  lines,  a 
[274] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


strange  machine,  presumably  hostile,  appeared 
far  up  and  far  away,  but  circled  off  to  the  south 
out  of  target  reach  before  the  balloon  gunman 
could  get  the  range  of  her  and  the  aim.  On 
the  heels  of  this  a  biplane  from  another  aviation 
field  somewhere  down  the  left  wing  dropped 
in  quite  informally  bearing  two  grease-stained 
men  to  pass  the  time  of  day  and  borrow  some 
gasoline.  The  occasion  appeared  to  demand 
a  drink.  We  all  repaired,  therefore,  to  one  of 
the  great  canvas  houses  where  the  air  birds 
nest  nighttimes  and  where  the  airmen  sleep. 
There  we  had  noggins  of  white  wine  all  round, 
and  a  pointer  dog,  which  was  chained  to  an 
officer's  trunk,  begged  me  in  plain  pointer 
language  to  cast  off  his  leash  so  he  might  go 
and  stalk  the  covey  of  pheasants  that  were 
taking  a  dust-bath  in  the  open  road  not  fifty 
yards  away. 

The  temptation  was  strong,  but  our  guides 
said  if  we  meant  to  get  to  the  battlefront 
before  lunch  it  was  time,  and  past  time,  we 
got  started.  Being  thus  warned  we  did  get 
started. 

Of  a  battle  there  is  this  to  be  said — that 
the  closer  you  get  to  it  the  less  do  you  see 
of  it.  Always  in  my  experiences  in  Belgium 
and  my  more  recent  experiences  in  France  I 
found  this  to  be  true.  Take,  for  example,  the 
present  instance.  I  knew  that  we  were  ap- 
proximately in  the  middle  sworl  of  the  twist- 
ing scroll  formed  by  the  German  center,  and 
[275] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


that  we  were  at  this  moment  entering  the  very 
tip  of  the  enormous  inverted  V  made  by  the 
frontmost  German  defenses.  I  knew  that 
stretching  away  to  the  southeast  of  us  and  to 
the  northwest  was  a  Hne  some  two  hundred 
miles  long,  measuring  it  from  tip  to  tip,  where 
sundry  millions  of  men  in  English  khaki  and 
French  fustian  and  German  shoddy-wools  were 
fighting  the  biggest  fight  and  the  most  pro- 
longed fight  and  the  most  stubborn  fight  that 
historians  probably  will  write  down  as  having 
been  fought  in  this  war  or  any  lesser  war,  I 
knew  this  fight  had  been  going  on  for  weeks 
now  back  and  forth  upon  the  River  Aisne 
and  would  certainly  go  on  for  weeks  and  per- 
haps months  more  to  come.  I  knew  these 
things  because  I  had  been  told  them;  but  I 
shouldn't  have  known  if  I  hadn't  been  told. 
I  shouldn't  even  have  guessed  it. 

I  recall  that  we  traveled  at  a  cup-racing  clip 
along  a  road  that  first  wound  like  a  coiling 
snake  and  then  straightened  like  a  striking 
snake,  and  that  always  we  traveled  through 
dust  so  thick  it  made  a  fog.  In  this  chalky 
land  of  northern  France  the  brittle  soil  dries 
out  after  a  rain  very  quickly,  and  turns  into 
a  white  powder  where  there  are  wheels  to 
churn  it  up  and  grit  it  fine.  Here  surely  there 
was  an  abundance  of  wheels.  We  passed  many 
marching  men  and  many  lumbering  supply 
trains  which  were  going  our  way,  and  we  met 
many  motor  ambulances  and  many  ammuni- 
[276] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


tion  trucks  which  were  coming  back.  Always 
the  ambulances  were  full  and  the  ammunition 
wagons  were  empty.  I  judge  an  expert  in  these 
things  might  by  the  fullness  of  the  one  and 
the  emptiness  of  the  other  gauge  the  emphasis 
with  which  the  fight  ahead  went  on.  The 
drivers  of  the  trucks  nearly  all  wore  captured 
French  caps  and  French  uniform  coats,  which 
adornment  the  marching  men  invariably  re- 
garded as  a  quaint  jest  to  be  laughed  at  and 
cheered  for. 

We  stopped  at  our  appointed  place,  which 
was  on  the  top  of  a  ridge  where  a  general  of  a 
corps  had  his  headquarters.  From  here  one 
had  a  view — a  fair  view  and,  roughly,  a  fan- 
shaped  view — ^of  certain  highly  important  artil- 
lery operations.  Likewise,  the  eminence,  gentle 
and  gradual  as  it  was,  commanded  a  mile-long 
stretch  of  the  road,  which  formed  the  main 
line  of  communication  between  the  front  and 
the  base;  and  these  two  facts  in  part  explained 
why  the  general  had  made  this  his  abiding  place. 
Even  my  layman's  mind  could  sense  the  rea- 
sons for  establishing  headquarters  at  such  a 
spot. 

As  for  the  general,  he  and  his  staff,  at  the 
moment  of  our  arrival  in  their  midst,  were  sta- 
tioned at  the  edge  of  a  scanty  woodland  where 
telescopes  stood  and  a  table  with  maps  and 
charts  on  it.  Quite  with  the  manner  of  men 
who  had  nothing  to  do  except  to  enjoy  the 
sunshine  and  breathe  the  fresh  air,  they  strolled 
[  277 1 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


back  and  forth  in  pairs  and  trios.  I  think  it 
must  have  been  through  force  of  habit  that, 
when  they  halted  to  turn  about  and  retrace  the 
route,  they  stopped  always  for  a  moment  or 
two  and  faced  southward.  It  was  from  the 
southward  that  there  came  rolling  up  to  us 
the  sounds  of  a  bellowing  chorus  of  gunfire — a 
Wagnerian  chorus,  truly.  That  perhaps  was 
as  it  should  be.  Wagner's  countrymen  were 
helping  to  make  it.  Now  the  separate  reports 
strung  out  until  you  could  count  perhaps  three 
between  reports;  now  they  came  so  close  to- 
gether that  the  music  they  made  was  a  con- 
stant roaring  which  would  endure  for  a  minute 
on  a  stretch,  or  half  a  minute  anyhow.  But 
for  all  the  noticeable  heed  which  any  uniformed 
men  in  my  vicinity  paid  to  this  it  might  as 
well  have  been  blasting  in  a  distant  stone 
quarry.  This  attitude  which  they  maintained, 
coupled  with  the  fact  that  seemingly  all  the 
firing  did  no  damage  whatsoever,  only  served 
to  strengthen  the  illusion  that  after  all  it  was 
not  the  actual  business  of  warfare  which 
spread  itself  beneath  our  eyes. 

Apparently  most  of  the  shells  from  the 
Allies'  side — which  of  course  was  the  far  side 
from  us— rose  out  of  a  dip  in  the  contour  of 
the  land.  Rising  so,  they  mainly  fell  among 
or  near  the  shattered  remnants  of  two  hamlets 
upon  the  nearer  front  of  a  little  hill  perhaps 
three  miles  from  our  location.  A  favorite 
object  of  their  attack  appeared  to  be  a  wrecked 
[2781 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


beet-sugar  factory  of  which  one  side  was 
blown  away. 

There  would  appear  just  above  the  horizon 
line  a  ball  of  smoke  as  black  as  your  hat  and 
the  size  of  your  hat,  which  meant  a  grenade 
of  high  explosives.  Then  right  behind  it  would 
blossom  a  dainty,  plumy  little  blob  of  innocent 
white,  fit  to  make  a  pompon  for  the  hat,  and 
that,  they  told  us,  would  be  shrapnel.  The 
German  reply  to  the  enemy's  guns  issued 
from  the  timbered  verges  of  slopes  at  our  right 
hand  and  our  left;  and  these  German  shells,  so 
far  as  we  might  judge,  passed  entirely  over 
and  beyond  the  smashed  hamlets  and  the  ruined 
sugar-beet  factory  and,  curving  downward,  ex- 
ploded out  of  our  sight. 

"The  French  persist  in  a  belief  that  we 
have  men  in  those  villages,'"  said  one  of  the 
general's  aides  to  me.  "They  are  wasting  their 
powder.  There  are  many  men  there  and  some 
among  them  are  Germans,  but  they  are  all 
dead  men." 

He  offered  to  show  me  some  live  men,  and 
took  me  to  one  of  the  telescopes  and  aimed 
the  barrel  of  it  in  the  proper  direction  while 
I  focused  for  distance.  Suddenly  out  of  the 
blur  of  the  lens  there  sprang  up  in  front  of  me, 
seemingly  quite  close,  a  zigzagging  toy  trench 
cut  in  the  face  of  a  little  hillock.  This  trench 
was  full  of  gray  figures  of  the  size  of  very  small 
dolls.  They  were  moving  aimlessly  back  and 
forth,  it  seemed  to  me,  doing  nothing  at  all. 
[2791 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Then  I  saw  another  trench  that  ran  slantwise 
up  the  hillock  and  it  contained  more  of  the 
pygmies.  A  number  of  these  pygmies  came 
out  of  their  trench — I  could  see  them  quite 
plainly,  clambering  up  the  steep  wall  of  it — 
and  they  moved,  very  slowly  it  w^ould  seem, 
toward  the  crosswise  trench  on  ahead  a  bit. 
To  reach  it  they  had  to  cross  a  sloping  green 
patch  of  cleared  land.  So  far  as  I  might  tell 
no  explosive  or  shrapnel  shower  fell  into  them 
or  near  them,  but  when  they  had  gone  perhaps 
a  third  of  the  distance  across  the  green  patch 
there  was  a  quick  scatteration  of  their  inch- 
high  figures.  Quite  distinctly  I  counted  three 
manikins  who  instantly  fell  down  flat  and  two 
others  who  went  ahead  a  little  way  deliberately, 
and  then  lay  down.  The  rest  darted  back  to 
the  cover  which  they  had  just  quit  and  jumped 
in  briskly.  The  five  figures  remained  where 
they  had  dropped  and  became  quiet.  Anyway, 
I  could  detect  no  motion  in  them.  They  were 
just  little  gray  strips.  Into  my  mind  on  the 
moment  came  incongruously  a  memory  of  what 
I  had  seen  a  thousand  times  in  the  composing 
room  of  a  country  newspaper  where  the  type 
was  set  by  hand.  I  thought  of  five  pica  plugs 
lying  on  the  printshop  floor. 

It  was  hard  for  me  to  make  myself  believe 
that  I  had  seen  human  beings  killed  and 
wounded.  I  can  hardly  believe  it  yet — that 
those  insignificant  toy-figures  were  really  and 
truly  men.  I  watched  through  the  glass  after 
[2801 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


that  for  possibly  twenty  minutes,  until  the 
summons  came  for  lunch,  but  no  more  of  the 
German  dolls  ventured  out  of  their  make- 
believe  defenses  to  be  blown  flat  by  an  in- 
visible blast. 

It  was  a  picnic  lunch  served  on  board  trestles 
under  a  tree  behind  the  cover  of  a  straw-roofed 
shelter  tent,  and  we  ate  it  in  quite  a  peaceful 
and  cozy  picnic  fashion.  Twice  during  the 
meal  an  orderly  came  with  a  message  which 
he  had  taken  off  a  field  telephone  in  a  little 
pigsty  of  logs  and  straw  fifty  feet  away  from 
us;  but  the  general  each  time  merely  canted 
his  head  to  hear  what  the  whispered  word 
might  be  and  went  on  eating.  There  was  no 
clattering  in  of  couriers,  no  hurried  dispatching 
of  orders  this  way  and  that.  Only,  just  before 
we  finished  with  the  meal,  he  got  up  and 
walked  away  a  few  paces,  and  there  two  of 
his  aides  joined  him  and  the  three  of  them 
confabbed  together  earnestly  for  a  couple  of 
minutes  or  so.  While  so  engaged  they  had 
the  air  about  them  of  surgeons  preparing  to 
undertake  an  operation  and  first  consulting 
over  the  preliminary  details.  Or  perhaps  it 
would  be  truer  to  say  they  looked  like  civil 
engineers  discussing  the  working-out  of  an 
undertaking  regarding  which  there  was  interest 
but  no  uneasiness.  Assuredly  they  behaved 
not  in  the  least  as  a  general  and  aides  would 
behave  in  a  story  book  or  on  the  stage,  and 
when  they  were  through  they  came  back  for 
[2811 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


their  coffee  and  their  cigars  to  the  table  where 
the  rest  of  us  sat. 

"We  are  going  now  to  a  battery  of  the 
twenty-one-centimeter  guns  and  from  there 
to  the  ten-centimeters,"  called  out  Lieutenant 
Geibel  as  we  climbed  aboard  our  cars;  "and 
when  we  pass  that  first  group  of  houses  yonder 
we  shall  be  under  fire.  So  if  you  have  wills  to 
make,  you  American  gentlemen,  you  should 
be  making  them  now  before  we  start."  A  gay 
young  officer  was  Lieutenant  Geibel,  and  he 
just  naturally  would  have  his  little  joke 
whether  or  no. 

Immediately  then  and  twice  again  that  day 
we  were  technically  presumed  to  be  under 
fire — I  use  the  word  technically  advisedly — 
and  again  the  next  day  and  once  again  two  days 
thereafter  before  Antwerp,  but  I  was  never 
able  to  convince  myself  that  it  was  so.  Cer- 
tainly there  was  no  sense  of  actual  danger  as 
we  sped  through  the  empty  single  street  of  a 
despoiled  and  tenantless  village.  All  about  us 
were  the  marks  of  what  the  shellfire  had  done, 
some  fresh  and  still  smoking,  some  old  and 
dry-charred,  but  no  shells  dropped  near  us 
as  we  circled  in  a  long  swing  up  to  within 
half  a  mile  of  the  first  line  of  German  trenches 
and  perhaps  a  mile  to  the  left  of  them. 

Thereby  we  arrived  safely  and  very  speedily 
and  without  mishap  at  a  battery  of  twenty- 
one-centimeter  guns,  standing  in  a  gnawed 
sheep  pasture  behind  an  abandoned  farmhouse 
[2821 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


— or  what  was  left  of  a  farmhouse,  which  was 
to  say  very  Httle  of  it  indeed.  The  guns  stood 
in  a  row,  and  each  one  of  them — there  were 
five  in  all — stared  with  its  single  round  eye 
at  the  blue  sky  where  the  sky  showed  above 
a  thick  screen  of  tall  slim  poplars  growing  on 
the  far  side  of  the  farmyard.  We  barely  had 
time  to  note  that  the  men  who  served  the 
guns  were  denned  in  holes  in  the  earth  like 
wolves,  with  earthen  roofs  above  them  and 
straw  beds  to  lie  on,  and  that  they  had  screened 
each  gun  in  green  saplings  cut  from  the  woods 
and  stuck  upright  in  the  ground,  to  hide  its 
position  from  the  sight  of  prying  aeroplane 
scouts,  and  that  the  wheels  of  the  guns  were 
tired  with  huge,  broad  steel  plates  called 
caterpillars,  to  keep  them  from  bogging  down 
in  miry  places — I  say  we  barely  had  time  to 
note  these  details  mentally  when  things  began 
to  happen.  There  was  a  large  and  much  be- 
mired  soldier  who  spraddled  facfe  downward 
upon  his  belly  in  one  of  the  straw-lined  dugouts 
with  his  ear  hitched  to  a  telephone.  Without 
lifting  his  head  or  turning  it  he  sang  out.  At 
that  all  the  other  men  sprang  up  very  promptly. 
Before,  they  had  been  sprawled  about  in 
sunny  places,  smoking  and  sleeping,  and 
writing  on  postcards.  Postcards,  butter  and 
beer— these  are  the  German  private's  luxuries, 
but  most  of  all  postcards.  The  men  bestirred 
themselves. 

"You    are    in    luck,    gentlemen,"    said    the 
[2831 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


lieutenant.  "This  battery  has  been  idle  all 
day,  but  now  it  is  to  begin  firing.  The  order 
to  fire  just  came.  The  balloon  operator,  who 
is  in  communication  with  the  observation  pits 
beyond  the  foremost  infantry  trenches,  will 
give  the  range  and  the  distance.  Listen, 
please."  He  held  up  his  hand  for  silence, 
intent  on  hearing  what  the  man  at  the  telephone 
was  repeating  back  over  the  line.  "Ah,  that's 
it — 5400  meters  straight  over  the  tree  tops." 

He  waved  us  together  into  a  more  compact 
group.  "That's  the  idea.  Stand  here,  please, 
behind  Number  One  gun,  and  watch  straight 
ahead  of  you  for  the  shot — you  must  watch 
very  closely  or  you  will  miss  it — and  remember 
to  keep  your  mouth  open  to  save  your  ear- 
drums from  being  injured  by  the  concussion." 

So  far  as  I  personally  was  concerned  this 
last  bit  of  advice  was  unnecessary — my  mouth 
was  open  already.  Four  men  trotted  to  a 
magazine  that  was  in  an  earthen  kennel  and 
came  back  bearing  a  wheelless  sheet-metal 
barrow  on  which  rested  a  three-foot-long  brass 
shell,  very  trim  and  slim  and  handsome  and 
shiny  lilvc  gold.  It  was  an  expensive-looking 
shell  and  quite  ornate.  At  the  tail  of  Number 
One  the  bearers  heaved  the  barrow  up  shoulder- 
high,  at  the  same  time  tilting  it  forward. 
Then  a  round  vent  opened  magically  and  the 
Cyclops  sucked  the  morsel  forward  into  its 
gullet,  thus  reversing  the  natural  swallowing 
process,  and  smacked  its  steel  lip  behind  it 
[2841 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


with  a  loud  and  greasy  snuck!  A  glutton  of  a 
gun — you  could  tell  that  from  the  sound  it 
made. 

A  lieutenant  snapped  out  something,  a  ser- 
geant snapped  it  back  to  him,  the  gun  crew 
jumped  aside,  balancing  themselves  on  tiptoe 
with  their  mouths  all  agape,  and  the  gun-firer 
either  pulled  a  lever  out  or  else  pushed  one 
home,  I  couldn't  tell  which.  Then  everything 
— sky  and  woods  and  field  and  all — fused  and 
ran  together  in  a  great  spatter  cf  red  flame 
and  white  smoke,  and  the  earth  beneath  our 
feet  shivered  and  shook  as  the  twenty-one- 
centimeter  spat  out  its  twenty-one-centimeter 
mouthful.  A  vast  obscenity  of  sound  beat 
upon  us,  making  us  reel  backward,  and  for 
just  the  one-thousandth  part  of  a  second  I 
saw  a  round  white  spot,  like  a  new  baseball, 
against  a  cloud  background.  The  poplars, 
which  had  bent  forward  as  if  before  a  quick 
wind-squall,  stood  up,  trembling  in  their  tops, 
and  we  dared  to  breathe  again.  Then  each 
in  its  turn  the  other  four  guns  spoke,  profaning 
the  welkin,  and  we  rocked  on  our  heels  like 
drunken  men,  and  I  remember  there  was  a  queer 
taste,  as  of  something  burned,  in  my  mouth. 
All  of  which  was  very  fine,  no  doubt,  and  very 
inspiring,  too,  if  one  cared  deeply  for  that  sort 
of  thing;  but  to  myself,  when  the  hemisphere 
had  ceased  from  its  quiverings,  I  said: 

"It  isn't  true — this  isn't  war;  it's  just  a 
costly,  useless  game  of  playing  at  war.  Behold, 
[285] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


now,  these  guns  did  not  fire  at  anybody  visible 
or  anything  tangible.  They  merely  elevated 
their  muzzles  into  the  sky  and  fired  into  the 
sky  to  make  a  great  tumult  and  spoil  the  good 
air  with  a  bad-tasting  smoke.  No  enemy  is 
in  sight  and  no  enemy  will  answer  back;  there- 
fore no  enemy  exists.  It  is  all  a  useless  and  a 
fussy  business,  signifying  nothing." 

Nor  did  any  enemy  answer  back.  The  guns 
having  been  fired  with  due  pomp  and  circum- 
stance, the  gunners  went  back  to  those  pipe- 
smoking  and  postcard-writing  pursuits  of  theirs 
and  everything  was  as  before — peaceful  and  en- 
tirely serene.  Only  the  telephone  man  re- 
mained in  his  bed  in  the  straw  with  his  ear  at 
his  telephone.  He  was  still  couched  there, 
spraddling  ridiculously  on  his  stomach,  with 
his  legs  outstretched  in  a  sawbuck  pattern,  as 
we  came  away. 

"It  isn't  always  quite  so  quiet  hereabouts," 
said  the  lieutenant.  "The  commander  of  this 
battery  tells  me  that  yesterday  the  French 
dropped  some  shrapnel  among  his  guns  and 
killed  a  man  or  two.  Perhaps  things  will  be 
brisker  at  the  ten-centimeter-gun  battery." 
He  spoke  as  one  who  regretted  that  the  show 
which  he  offered  was  not  more  exciting. 

The  twenty-one-centimeters,  as  I  have  told 
you,  were  in  the  edge  of  the  woods,  with  leafy 
ambushes  about  them,  but  the  little  ten- 
centimeter  guns  ranged  themselves  quite  boldly 
in  a  meadow  of  rank  long  grass  just  under  the 
[286] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


weather-rim  of  a  small  hill.  They  were  buried 
to  their  haunches — if  a  field  gun  may  be  said 
to  have  haunches — in  depressions  gouged  out 
by  their  own  frequent  recoils;  otherwise  they 
were  w^ithout  concealment  of  any  sort.  To 
reach  them  we  rode  a  mile  or  two  and  then 
walked  a  quarter  of  a  mile  through  a  series  of 
chalky  bare  gullies,  and  our  escorts  made  us  stoop 
low  and  hurry  fast  wherever  the  path  wound  up 
to  the  crest  of  the  bank,  lest  our  figures,  being 
outlined  against  the  sky,  should  betray  our 
whereabouts  and,  what  was  more  important,  the 
whereabouts  of  the  battery  to  the  sharp- 
shooters in  the  French  rifle  pits  forward  of  the 
French  infantry  trenches  and  not  exceeding 
a  mile  from  us.  We  stopped  first  at  an  ob- 
servation station  cunningly  hidden  in  a  haw 
thicket  on  the  brov,^  of  a  steep  and  heavily 
wooded  defile  overlooking  the  right  side  of  the 
river  valley — the  river,  however,  being  entirely 
out  of  sight.  Standing  here  we  heard  the 
guns  speak  apparently  from  almost  beneath 
our  feet,  and  three  or  four  seconds  thereafter 
we  saw  five  little  puffballs  of  white  smoke  un- 
curling above  a  line  of  trees  across  the  valley. 
Somebody  said  this  was  our  battery  shelling 
the  French  and  English  in  those  woods  yonder, 
but  you  could  hardly  be  expected  to  believe 
that,  since  no  reply  came  back  and  no  French 
or  English  whatsoever  showed  themselves. 
Altogether  it  seemed  a  most  impotent  and  im- 
personal proceeding;  and  when  the  novelty  of 
[287] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


waiting  for  the  blast  of  sound  and  then  watch- 
ing for  the  smoke  plumes  to  appear  had  worn 
off,  as  it  very  soon  did,  we  visited  the  guns 
themselves.  They  were  not  under  our  feet  at 
all.  They  were  some  two  hundred  yards  away, 
across  a  field  where  the  telephone  wires 
stretched  over  the  old  plow  furrows  and 
through  the  rank  meadow  grass,  like  springes 
to  catch  woodcock. 

Here  again  the  trick  of  taking  a  message 
off  the  telephone  and  shouting  it  forth  from 
the  mouth  of  a  fox  burrow  was  repeated. 
Whenever  this  procedure  came  to  pass  a  ser- 
geant who  had  strained  his  vocal  cords  from 
much  giving  of  orders  would  swell  out  his 
chest  and  throw  back  his  head  and  shriek 
hoarsely  with  what  was  left  of  his  voice,  which 
wasn't  much.  This  meant  a  fury  of  noise 
resulting  instantly  and  much  white  smoke  to 
follow.  For  a  while  the  guns  were  fired  singly 
and  then  they  were  fired  in  salvos;  and  you 
might  mark  how  the  grass  for  fifty  yards  in 
front  of  the  muzzles  would  lie  on  the  earth 
quite  flat  and  then  stand  erect,  and  how  the 
guns,  like  shying  bronchos,  would  leap  back- 
ward upon  their  carriages  and  then  slide  for- 
ward again  as  the  air  in  the  air  cushions  took 
up  the  kick.  Also  we  took  note  that  the  crews 
of  the  ten-centimeters  had  built  for  them- 
selves dugouts  to  sleep  in  and  to  live  in,  and 
had  covered  the  sod  roofs  over  with  straw 
and  broken  tree  limbs.  We  judged  they  would 
[288] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


be  very  glad  indeed  to  crawl  into  those  same 
shelters  when  night  came,  for  they  had  been 
serving  the  guns  all  day  and  plainly  were  about 
as  weary  as  men  could  be.  To  burn  powder 
hour  after  hour  and  day  after  day  and  week 
after  week  at  a  foe  who  never  sees  you  and 
whom  you  never  see;  to  go  at  this  dreary, 
heavy  trade  of  war  with  the  sober,  uninspired 
earnestness  of  convicts  building  a  prison  wall 
about  themselves — the  ghastly  unreality  of  the 
proposition  left  me  mentally  numbed. 

Howsoever,  we  arrived  not  long  after  that 
at  a  field  hospital — namely,  Field  Hospital 
Number  36,  and  here  was  realism  enough  to 
satisfy  the  lexicographer  who  first  coined  the 
word.  This  field  hospital  was  established  in 
eight  abandoned  houses  of  the  abandoned 
small  French  village  of  Colligis,  and  all  eight 
houses  were  crowded  with  wounded  men  lying 
as  closely  as  they  could  lie  upon  mattresses  placed 
side  by  side  on  the  floors,  with  just  room  to 
step  between  the  mattresses.  Be  it  remembered 
also  that  these  were  all  men  too  seriously 
wounded  to  be  moved  even  to  a  point  as  close 
as  Laon;  those  more  lightly  injured  than  these 
were  already  carried  back  to  the  main  hospitals. 

We  went  into  one  room  containing  only  men 
suffering  from  chest  wounds,  who  coughed  and 
wheezed  and  constantly  fought  off  the  swarm- 
ing flies  that  assailed  them,  and  into  another 
room  given  over  entirely  to  brutally  abbreviated 
human  fragments — fractional  parts  of  men 
[289] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


who  had  lost  their  arms  or  legs.  On  the  far 
mattress  against  the  wall  lay  a  little  pale 
German  with  his  legs  gone  below  the  knees, 
who  smiled  upward  at  the  ceiling  and  Vv^as  quite 
chipper. 

"A  wonderful  man,  that  little  chap,"  said 
one  of  the  surgeons  to  me.  "When  they  first 
brought  him  here  two  weeks  ago  I  said  to  him: 
'It's  hard  on  you  that  you  should  lose  both 
your  feet,'  and  he  looked  up  at  me  and  grinned 
and  said:  'Herr  Doctor,  it  might  have  been 
worse.  It  might  have  been  my  hands — and 
me  a  tailor  by  trade!'  " 

This  surgeon  told  us  he  had  an  American 
wife,  and  he  asked  me  to  bear  a  message  for 
him  to  his  wife's  people  in  the  States.  So 
if  these  lines  should  come  to  the  notice  of 
Mrs.  Rosamond  Harris,  who  lives  at  Hines- 
burg,  Vermont,  she  may  know  that  her  son- 
in-law,  Doctor  Schilling,  was  at  last  accounts 
very  busy  and  very  well,  although  coated  with 
white  dust — face,  head  and  eyebrows — so  that 
he  reminded  me  of  a  clown  in  a  pantomime, 
and  dyed  as  to  his  hands  with  iodine  to  an 
extent  that  made  his  fingers  look  like  pieces 
of  well-cured  meerschaum. 

They  were  bringing  in  more  men,  newly 
wounded  that  day,  as  we  came  out  of  Doctor 
Schilling's  improvised  operating  room  in  the 
little  village  schoolhouse,  and  one  of  the  litter 
bearers  was  a  smart-faced  little  London  Cock- 
ney, a  captured  English  ambulance-hand,  who 
[2901 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


wore  a  German  soldier's  cap  to  save  liim  from 
possible  annoyance  as  he  went  about  his  work. 
Not  very  many  wounded  had  arrived  since  the 
morning — it  was  a  dull  day  for  them,  the 
surgeons  said — but  I  took  note  that,  when  the 
Red  Cross  men  put  down  a  canvas  stretcher 
upon  the  courtyard  flags  and  shortly  there- 
after took  it  up  again,  it  left  a  broad  red  smear 
where  it  rested  against  the  flat  stones.  Also 
this  stretcher  and  all  the  other  stretchers  had 
been  so  sagged  by  the  weight  of  bodies  that 
they  threatened  to  rip  from  the  frames,  and  so 
stained  by  that  which  had  stained  them  that 
the  canvas  was  as  stiff  as  though  it  had  been 
varnished  and  revarnished  with  many  coats 
of  brown  shellac.  But  it  wasn't  shellac.  There 
is  just  one  fluid  which  leaves  that  brown,  hard 
coating  when  it  dries  upon  woven  cloth. 

As  I  recall  now  we  had  come  through  the 
gate  of  the  schoolhouse  to  where  the  auto- 
mobiles stood  when  a  puff  of  wind,  blowing 
to  us  from  the  left,  which  meant  from  across 
the  battlefront,  brought  to  our  noses  a  certain 
smell  which  we  already  knew  full  well. 

"You  get  it,  I  see,"  said  the  German  ofScer 
who  stood  alongside  me.  "It  comes  from 
three  miles  off,  but  you  can  get  it  five  miles 
distant  when  the  wind  is  strong.  That" — 
and  he  waved  his  left  arm  toward  it  as  though 
the  stench  had  been  a  visible  thing — "that 
explains  why  tobacco  is  so  scarce  with  us 
among  the  staff  back  yonder  in  Laon.  All  the 
[291 1 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


tobacco  which  can  be  spared  is  sent  to  the  men 
in  the  front  trenches.  As  long  as  they  smoke 
and  keep  on  smoking  they  can  stand — that! 

"You  see,"  he  went  on  painstakingly,  "the 
situation  out  there  at  Cerny  is  like  this:  The 
French  and  English,  but  mainly  the  English, 
held  the  ground  first.  We  drove  them  back 
and  they  lost  very  heavily.  In  places  their 
trenches  were  actually  full  of  dead  and  dying 
men  when  we  took  those  trenches. 

"You  could  have  buried  them  merely  by 
filling  up  the  trenches  with  earth.  And  that 
old  beet-sugar  factory  which  you  saw  this 
noon  when  we  were  at  field  headquarters — it 
was  crowded  with  badly  wounded  Englishmen. 

"At  once  they  rallied  and  forced  us  back, 
and  now  it  was  our  turn  to  lose  heavily.  That 
was  nearly  three  weeks  ago,  and  since  then 
the  ground  over  which  we  fought  has  been 
debatable  ground,  lying  between  our  lines  and 
the  enemy's  lines — a  stretch  four  miles  long 
and  half  a  mile  wide  that  is  literally  carpeted 
with  bodies  of  dead  men.  They  weren't  all 
dead  at  first.  For  two  days  and  nights  our 
men  in  the  earthworks  heard  the  cries  of 
those  who  still  lived,  and  the  sound  of  them 
almost  drove  them  mad.  There  was  no  reach- 
ing the  wounded,  though,  either  from  our 
lines  or  from  the  Allies'  lines.  Those  who  tried 
to  reach  them  were  themselves  killed.  Now 
there  are  only  dead  out  there — thousands  of 
dead,  I  think.  And  they  have  been  there 
[292] 


WAR    DE    LUXE 


twenty  days.  Once  in  a  while  a  shell  strikes 
that  old  sugar  mill  or  falls  into  one  of  those 
trenches.  Then — well,  then,  it  is  worse  for 
those  who  serve  in  the  front  lines." 

"But  in  the  name  of  God,  man,"  I  said, 
"why  don't  they  call  a  truce — both  sides — 
and  put  that  horror  underground.'^" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"War  is  different  now,"  he  said.  "Truces 
are  out  of  fashion." 

I  stood  there  and  I  smelled  tliat  smell.  And 
I  thought  of  all  those  flies,  and  those  blood- 
stiffened  stretchers,  and  those  little  inch-long 
figures  which  I  myself,  looking  through  that 
telescope,  had  seen  lying  on  the  green  hill,  and 
those  automobiles  loaded  with  mangled  men, 
and  War  de  Luxe  betrayed  itself  to  me.  Be- 
neath its  bogus  glamour  I  saw  war  for  what 
it  is — the  next  morning  of  drunken  glory. 


293] 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  RUT  OF  BIG  GUNS  IN  FRANCE 


LET  me  say  at  the  outset  of  this  chapter 
that  I  do  not  setup  as  one  professing 
i  to  have  any  knowledge  whatsoever  of 
so-called  military  science.  The  more  I 
have  seen  of  the  carrying-on  of  the  actual 
business  of  war,  the  less  able  do  I  seem  to 
be  to  understand  the  meanings  of  the  business. 
For  me  strategy  remains  a  closed  book.  Even 
the  simplest  primary  lessons  of  it,  the  A  B  C's 
of  it,  continue  to  impress  me  as  being  stupid, 
but  none  the  less  unplumbable  mysteries. 

The  physical  aspects  of  campaigning  I  can 
in  a  way  grasp.  At  least  I  flatter  myself  that 
I  can.  A  man  would  have  to  be  deaf  and 
dumb  and  blind  not  to  grasp  them,  did  they 
reveal  themselves  before  him  as  they  have 
revealed  themselves  before  me.  Indeed,  if  he 
preserved  only  the  faculty  of  scent  unimpaired 
he  might  still  be  able  to  comprehend  the  thing, 
since,  as  I  have  said  before,  war  in  its  com- 
[2941 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


nioner  phases  is  not  so  much  a  sight  as  a  great 
bad  smell.  As  for  the  rudiments  of  the  sys- 
tem which  dictates  the  movements  of  troops 
in  large  masses  or  in  small,  which  sacrifices 
thousands  of  men  to  take  a  town  or  hold  a  river 
when  that  town  and  that  river,  physically 
considered,  appear  to  be  of  no  consequence 
whatsoever,  those  elements  I  have  not  been  able 
to  sense,  even  though  I  studied  the  matter 
most  diligently.  So  after  sundry  months  of 
first-hand  observation  in  one  of  the  theaters  of 
hostilities,  I  tell  myself  that  the  trade  of  fighting 
is  a  trade  to  be  learned  by  slow  and  laborious 
degrees,  and  even  then  may  be  learned  with 
thoroughness  only  by  one  who  has  a  natural 
aptitude  for  it.  Either  that,  or  else  I  am  most 
extraordinarily  thick-headed,  for  I  own  that 
I  am  still  as  complete  a  greenhorn  now  as  I 
was  at  the  beginning. 

Having  made  the  confession  which  is  said 
to  be  good  for  the  soul,  and  which  in  any 
event  has  the  merit  of  blunting  in  advance  the 
critical  judgments  of  the  expert,  since  he  must 
pity  my  ignorance  and  my  innocence  even 
though  he  quarrel  with  my  conclusions,  I  now 
assume  the  role  of  prophet  long  enough  to 
venture  to  say  that  the  day  of  the  modern 
walled  fort  is  over  and  done  with.  I  do  not 
presume  to  speak  regarding  coast  defenses 
maintained  for  the  purposes  of  repelling  at- 
tacks or  invasions  from  the  sea.  I  am  speaking 
with  regard  to  land  defenses  which  are  assail- 
[2951 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


able  by  land  forces.  I  believe  in  the  future 
great  wars — if  indeed  there  are  to  be  any  more 
great  wars  following  after  this  one — that  the 
nations  involved,  instead  of  buttoning  their 
frontiers  down  with  great  fortresses  and  ring- 
ing their  principal  cities  about  with  circles  of 
protecting  works,  will  put  their  trust  more 
and  more  in  transportable  cannon  of  a  caliber 
and  a  projecting  force  greater  than  any  yet 
built  or  planned.  I  make  this  assertion  after 
viewing  the  visible  results  of  the  operations  of 
the  German  42-centimeter  guns  in  Belgium  and 
France,  notably  at  Liege  in  the  former  country 
and  at  Maubeuge  in  the  latter. 

Except  for  purposes  of  frightening  non- 
combatants  the  Zeppelins  apparently  have 
proved  of  most  dubious  value;  nor,  barring 
its  value  as  a  scout — a  field  in  which  it  is  of 
marvelous  efficiency — does  the  aeroplane  appear 
to  have  been  of  much  consequence  in  inflicting 
loss  upon  the  enemy.  Of  the  comparatively 
new  devices  for  waging  war,  the  submarine  and 
the  great  gun  alone  seem  to  have  justified  in 
any  great  degree  the  hopes  of  their  sponsors. 

Since  I  came  back  out  of  the  war  zone  I 
^  have  met  persons  who  questioned  the  existence 
of  a  42-centimeter  gun,  they  holding  it  to  be  a 
nightmare  created  out  of  the  German  imagina- 
tion with  intent  to  break  the  confidence  of  the 
enemies  of  Germany.  I  did  not  see  a  42-centi- 
meter gun  with  my  own  eyes,  and  personally  I 
doubt  whether  the  Germans  had  as  many  of 
[2961 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


them  as  they  claimed  to  have;  but  I  talked 
with  one  entirely  reliable  witness,  an  American 
consular  officer,  who  saw  a  42-centimeter  gun 
as  it  was  being  transported  to  the  front  in  the 
opening  week  of  the  war,  and  with  another 
American,  a  diplomat  of  high  rank,  who  inter- 
viewed a  man  who  saw  one  of  these  guns, 
and  who  in  detailing  the  conversation  to  me 
said  the  spectator  had  been  literally  stunned 
by  the  size  and  length  and  the  whole  terrific 
contour  of  the  monster.  Finally,  I  know  from 
personal  experience  that  these  guns  have  been 
employed,  and  employed  with  a  result  that 
goes  past  adequate  description;  but  if  I  hadn't 
seen  the  effect  of  their  fire  I  wouldn't  have 
believed  it  were  true.  I  wouldn't  have  be- 
lieved anything  evolved  out  of  the  brains  of 
men  and  put  together  by  the  fingers  of  men 
could  operate  with  such  devilish  accuracy  to 
compass  such  utter  destruction.  I  would  have 
said  it  was  some  planetic  force,  some  convulsion 
of  natural  forces,  and  not  an  agency  of  human 
devisement,  that  turned  Fort  Loncin  inside 
out,  and  transformed  it  within  a  space  of  hours 
from  a  supposedly  impregnable  stronghold 
into  a  hodgepodge  of  complete  and  hideous 
ruination.  And  what  befell  Fort  Loncin  on 
the  hills  behind  Liege  befell  Fort  Des  Sarts 
outside  of  Maubeuge,  as  I  have  reason  to  know. 
When  the  first  of  the  42-centimeters  emerged 
from  Essen  it  took  a  team  of  thirty  horses  to 
haul  it;  and  with  it  out  of  that  nest  of  the 
[297] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Prussian  war  eagle  came  also  a  force  of  mechan- 
ics and  engineers  to  set  it  up  and  aim  it  and  fire  it. 
Here,  too,  is  an  interesting  fact  that  I  have  not 
seen  printed  anywhere,  though  I  heard  it  often 
enough  in  Germany:  by  reason  of  its  bulk  the 
42-centimeter  must  be  mounted  upon  a  con- 
crete base  before  it  can  be  used.  Heretofore 
the  concrete  which  was  available  for  this  pur- 
pose required  at  least  a  fortnight  of  exposure 
before  it  was  sufficiently  firm  and  hardened;  but 
when  Fraulein  Bertha  Krupp's  engineers  es- 
corted the  Fraulein's  newest  and  most  im- 
pressive steel  masterpiece  to  the  war,  they 
brought  along  with  them  the  ingredients  for 
a  new  kind  of  concrete;  and  those  who  claim 
to  have  been  present  on  the  occasion  declare 
that  within  forty-eight  hours  after  they  had 
mixed  and  molded  it,  it  was  ready  to  bear  the 
weight  of  the  guns  and  withstand  the  shock 
of  their  recoil. 

This  having  been  done,  I  conceive  of  the 
operators  as  hoisting  their  guns  into  position, 
and  posting  up  a  set  of  rules— even  in  time  of 
war  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  the  Germans 
doing  anything  of  importance  without  a  set  of 
rules  to  go  by— and  working  out  the  distance 
by  mathematics,  and  then  turning  loose  their 
potential  cataclysms  upon  the  stubborn  forts 
which  opposed  their  further  progress.  From 
the  viewpoint  of  the  Germans  the  consequences 
to  the  foe  must  amply  have  justified  the  trouble 
and  the  cost.  For  where  a  42-centimeter  shell 
[298] 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


falls  it  does  more  than  merely  alter  landscape; 
almost  you  might  say  it  alters  geography. 

In  the  open  field,  where  he  must  aim  his  gun 
with  his  own  eye  and  discharge  it  with  his  own 
finger,  I  take  it  the  Kaiser's  private  soldier  is 
no  great  shakes  as  a  marksman.  The  Germans 
themselves  begrudgingly  admitted  the  French 
excelled  them  in  the  use  of  light '  artillery. 
There  was  wonderment  as  well  as  reluctance 
in  this  concession.  To  them  it  seemed  well- 
nigh  incredible  that  any  nation  should  be  their 
superiors  in  any  department  pertaining  to  the 
practice  of  war.  They  could  not  bring  them- 
selves fully  to  understand  it.  It  remained  as 
much  a  puzzle  to  them  as  the  unaccountable 
obstinacy  of  the  English  in  refusing  to  be 
budged  out  of  their  position  by  displays  of 
cold  steel,  or  to  be  shaken  by  the  volleying, 
bull-like  roar  of  the  German  charging  cry, 
which  at  first  the  Germans  counted  upon  as 
being  almost  as  efficacious  as  the  bayonet  for 
instilling  a  wholesome  fear  of  the  German  war 
god  into  the  souls  of  their  foes. 

While  giving  the  Frenchmen  credit  for 
knowing  how  to  handle  and  serve  small  field- 
pieces,  the  Germans  nevertheless  insisted  that 
their  infantry  fire  or  their  skirmish  fire  was 
as  deadly  as  that  of  the  Allies,  or  even  deadlier. 
This  I  was  not  prepared  to  believe.  I  do  not 
think  the  German  is  a  good  rifle  shot  by  in- 
stinct, as  the  American  often  is,  and  in  a  lesser 
degree,  perhaps,  the  Englishman  is,  too.  But 
[299  ] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


where  he  can  work  the  range  out  on  paper, 
where  he  has  to  do  with  mechanics  instead  of 
a  shifting  mark,  where  he  can  apply  to  the  de- 
tails of  gun  firing  the  exact  principles  of  arith- 
metic, I  am  pretty  sure  the  German  is  as 
good  a  gunner  as  may  be  found  on  the  Con- 
tinent of  Europe  to-day.  This  may  not  apply 
to  him  at  sea,  for  he  has  neither  the  sailor 
traditions  nor  the  inherited  naval  craftsmanship 
of  the  English;  but  judging  by  what  I  have 
seen  I  am  quite  certain  that  with  the  solid 
earth  beneath  him  and  a  set  of  figures  before 
him  and  an  enemy  out  of  sight  of  him  to  be 
damaged  he  is  in  a  class  all  by  himself. 

A  German  staff  officer,  who  professed  to 
have  been  present,  told  me  that  at  Manonvilla 
— so  he  spelled  the  name — a  42-centim.eter 
gun  was  fired  one  hundred  and  forty-seven 
times  from  a  distance  of  14,000  meters  at  a 
fort  measuring  600  meters  in  length  by  400 
meters  in  breadth — a  very  small  target,  in- 
deed, considering  the  range — and  that  inves- 
tigation after  the  capture  of  the  fort  showed 
not  a  single  one  of  the  one  hundred  and  fort}- 
seven  shots  had  been  an  outright  miss.  Some 
few,  he  said,  hit  the  walls  or  at  the  bases  of 
the  walls,  but  all  the  others,  he  claimed,  had 
buU's-eyed  into  the  fort  itself. 

Subsequently,  on  subjecting  this  tale  to  the 

acid  test  of  second  thought  I  was  compelled 

to  doubt  what  the  staff  officer  had  said.      To 

begin   with,    I   didn't   understand   how   a   42- 

[300] 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


centimeter  gun  could  be  fired  one  hundred 
and  forty-seven  times  without  its  wearing  out, 
for  I  have  often  heard  that  the  larger  the 
bore  of  your  gun  and  the  heavier  the  charge 
of  explosives  which  it  carries,  the  shorter  is 
its  period  of  efficiency.  In  the  second  place, 
it  didn't  seem  possible  after  being  hit  one 
hundred  and  forty-seven  times  with  42-centi- 
meter bombs  that  enough  of  any  fort  of  what- 
soever size  would  be  left  to  permit  of  a  tallying- 
up  of  separate  shots.  Ten  shots  properly 
placed  should  have  razed  it;  twenty  more 
should  have  blown  its  leveled  remainder  to 
powder  and  scattered  the  powder. 

Be  the  facts  what  they  may  with  regard  to 
this  case  of  the  fort  of  Manonvilla — if  that  be 
its  proper  name — -I  am  prepared  to  speak  with 
the  assurance  of  an  eyewitness  concerning  the 
effect  of  the  German  fire  upon  the  defenses 
of  Maubeuge.  What  I  saw  at  Liege  I  have 
described  in  a  previous  chapter  of  this  volume. 
What  I  saw  at  Maubeuge  was  even  more 
convincing  testimony,  had  I  needed  it,  that  the 
Germans  had  a  42-centimeter  gun,  and  that, 
given  certain  favored  conditions,  they  knew 
how  to  handle  it  effectively. 

We  spent  the  better  part  of  a  day  in  two  of 
the  forts  which  were  fondly  presumed  to  guard 
Maubeuge  toward  the  north — Fort  Des  Sarts 
and  Fort  Boussois;  but  Fort  Des  Sarts  was  the 
one  where  the  42-centimeter  gun  gave  the  first 
exhibition  of  its  powers  upon  French  soil  in 
[3011 


I'A'niS    OK    (.  LOIIV 


this  war,  so  \v<*  wciil  there  hrst.  'I'o  reaeli  it 
we  rail  ji  iiuitter  of  seven  kihjineters  through 
a  succession  of  vilhiges,  each  with  its  mutely 
elofjiient  taU»  of  devastation  and  s:eneral  smash 
to  tell;  each  with  its  group  of  eoiitemptiioiisly 
tok^rant  CJerman  soldiers  on  jjfuard  and  its  haiul- 
ful  of  natives,  striving?  feebly  to  piece  togetlier 
the  broken  and  bankrupt  fragments  of  their 
worldly  affairs. 

Approaehing  Des  Sarts  more  nearly  we 
came  to  a  longish  stretch  of  highway,  which 
the  French  had  cleared  of  visual  obstructions 
in  anticij)ation  of  resistance  by  infantry  in  the 
event  that  the  outer  ring  of  defenses  gave  way 
before  the  (Jerman  l)oml)ardnient.  It  had  all 
been  labor  in  vain,  for  the  town  capitulated 
after  the  outposts  fell;  I  nil  it  must  have  been 
very  great  labor.  Any  number  of  fine  elm  trees 
had  been  felled  and  their  boughs,  stripped  now 
of  leaves,  stuck  up  like  bare  bones.  There 
were  holes  in  the  metaled  road  where  misaimed 
shells  had  descendeil,  aiui  in  any  one  of  these 
holes  you  might  liave  buried  a  horse.  A  little 
gray  church  stood  off  by  itself  upon  the  plain. 
It  had  l)een  homely  i'liough  to  start  with. 
Now  with  its  steeple  shorn  away  and  t)ne  of 
its  two  belfry  windows  obliterated  by  a  stray- 
ing shot  it  had  a  lakish,  cock-eyed  look  to  it. 

Just  beyond  \\li<i«-  the  church  was  our 
chauireur  halted  IIk-  car  in  obedience  to  an 
order  from  the  staif  oflicer  who  luul  been 
detailed  by  Major  von  Abercron,  commandant 

I  mn  1 


BIG    GUNS    IX    FRANCE 


of  ]\Iaubeuge,  to  accompany  us  on  this  par- 
ticular excursion.  Our  guide  pointed  off  to  the 
right.  "There,"  he  said,  "is  where  we  dropped 
the  first  of  our  big  ones  when  we  were  trying 
to  get  the  range  of  the  fort.  You  see  our 
guns  were  posted  at  a  point  between  eight  and 
nine  kilometers  away  and  at  the  start  we  over- 
shot a  trifle.  Still  to  the  garrison  yonder  it 
must  have  been  an  unhappy  foretaste  of  what 
they  might  shortly  expect,  when  they  saw  the 
forty-twos  striking  here  in  this  field  and  saw 
what  execution  they  did  among  the  cabbage 
and  the  beet  patches." 

We  left  the  car  and,  following  our  guide, 
went  to  look.  Spaced  very  neatly  at  intervals 
apart  of  perhaps  a  hundred  and  fifty  yards  a 
series  of  craters  broke  the  surface  of  the  earth. 
Considering  the  tools  which  dug  them  they 
were  rather  symmetrical  craters,  not  jagged 
and  gouged,  but  with  smooth  walls  and  each 
in  shape  a  perfect  funnel.  We  measured  roughly 
a  typical  specimen.  Across  the  top  it  was 
between  fifty  and  sixty  feet  in  diameter,  and 
it  sloped  down  evenly  for  a  depth  of  eighteen 
feet  in  the  chalky  soil  to  a  pointed  bottom, 
where  two  men  would  have  difficulty  standing 
together  without  treading  upon  each  other's 
toes.  Its  sides  were  lined  with  loose  pellets 
of  earth  of  the  average  size  of  a  tennis  ball, 
and  when  we  slid  down  into  the  hole  these 
rounded  clods  accompanied  us  in  small  av- 
alanches. 

[3031 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


We  were  filled  with  astonishment,  first,  that 
an  explosive  grenade,  weighing  upward  of  a 
ton,  could  be  so  constructed  that  it  would 
penetrate  thus  far  into  firm  and  solid  earth 
before  it  exploded;  and,  second,  that  it  could 
make  such  a  neat  saucer  of  a  hole  when  it  did 
explode.  But  there  was  a  still  more  amazing 
thing  to  be  pondered.  Of  the  earth  vrhich 
had  been  dispossessed  from  the  crevasse, 
amounting  to  a  gi-eat  many  wagonloads,  no 
sign  remained.  It  was  not  heaped  up  about 
the  lips  of  the  funnel;  it  was  not  visibly  scat- 
tered over  the  nearermost  furrows  of  that  truck 
field.  So  far  as  we  might  tell  it  was  utterly 
gone;  and  from  that  we  deduced  that  the  force 
of  the  explosion  had  been  suflScient  to  pul- 
verize the  clay  so  finely  and  cast  it  so  far  and 
so  wide  that  it  fell  upon  the  surface  in  a  fine 
shower,  leaving  no  traces  unless  one  made  a 
minute  search  for  it.  Noting  the  wonder 
upon  our  faces,  the  officer  was  moved  to  speak 
further  in  a  tone  of  sincere  admiration,  touch- 
ing on  the  capabilities  of  the  crowning  achieve- 
ment of  the  Krupp  works: 

"Pretty  strong  medicine,  eh.'^  Well,  wait 
until  I  have  shown  you  American  gentlemen 
what  remains  of  the  fort;  then  you  will  better 
understand.  Even  here,  out  in  the  open,  for 
a  radius  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  meters,  any 
man,  conceding  he  wasn't  killed  outright, 
would  be  knocked  senseless  and  after  that  for 
hours,  even  for  days,  perhaps,  he  would  be 
[3041 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


entirely  unnerved.  The  force  of  the  concus- 
sion appears  to  have  that  effect  upon  persons 
who  are  at  a  considerable  distance — it  rips 
their  nerves  to  tatters.  Some  seem  numbed 
and  dazed;  others  develop  an  acute  hysteria. 

"Highly  interesting,  is  it  not.'^  Listen  then; 
here  is  something  even  more  interesting: 
Within  an  inclosed  space,  where  there  is  a  roof 
to  hold  in  the  gas  generated  by  the  explosion 
or  where  there  are  reasonably  high  walls,  the 
man  who  escapes  being  torn  apart  in  the 
instant  of  impact,  or  who  escapes  being  crushed 
to  death  by  collapsing  masonry,  or  killed  by 
flying  fragments,  is  exceedingly  likely  to  choke 
to  death  as  he  lies  temporarily  paralyzed  and 
helpless  from  the  shock.  I  was  at  Liege  and 
again  here,  and  I  know  from  my  own  observa- 
tions that  this  is  true.  At  Liege  particularly 
many  of  the  garrison  were  caught  and  penned 
up  in  underground  casements,  and  there  we 
found  them  afterward  dead,  but  with  no  marks 
of  wounds  upon  them — they  had  been  as- 
phyxiated." 

I  suppose  in  times  of  peace  the  speaker 
was  a  reasonably  kind  man  and  reasonably 
regardful  of  the  rights  of  his  fellowmen.  Cer- 
tainly he  was  most  courteous  to  us  and  most 
considerate;  but  he  described  this  slaughter- 
pit  scene  with  the  enthusiasm  of  one  who  was 
a  partner  in  a  most  creditable  and  worthy 
enterprise. 

Immediately  about  Des  Sarts  stood  many 
[305] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


telegraph  poles  in  a  row,  for  here  the  road, 
which  was  the  main  road  from  Paris  to  Brus- 
sels, curved  close  up  under  the  grass-covered 
bastions.  All  the  telegraph  wires  had  been 
cut,  and  they  dangled  about  the  bases  of  the 
poles  in  snarled  tangles  like  love  vines.  The 
ditches  paralleling  the  road  were  choked  with 
felled  trees,  and,  what  with  the  naked  limbs, 
were  as  spiky  as  shad  spines.  Of  the  small 
cottages  which  once  had  stood  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  fort  not  one  remained  standing.  Their 
sites  were  marked  by  flattened  heaps  of  brick 
and  plaster  from  which  charred  ends  of  rafters 
protruded.  It  was  as  though  a  gaint  had  sat 
himself  down  upon  each  little  house  in  turn 
and  squashed  it  to  the  foundation  stones. 

As  a  fort  Des  Sarts  dated  back  to  1883. 
I  speak  of  it  in  the  past  tense,  because  the 
Germans  had  put  it  in  that  tense.  As  a  fort, 
or  as  anything  resembling  a  fort,  it  had  ceased 
to  be,  absolutely.  The  inner  works  of  it — 
the  redan  and  the  underground  barracks,  and 
the  magazines,  and  all — were  built  after  the 
style  followed  by  military  engineers  back  in 
1883,  having  revetments  faced  up  with  brick 
and  stone;  but  only  a  little  while  ago — in  the 
summer  of  1913,  to  be  exact — the  job  of  in- 
closing the  original  works  with  a  glacis  of  a 
newer  type  had  been  completed.  So  when 
the  Germans  came  along  in  the  first  week  of 
September  it  was  in  most  respects  made  over 
into  a  modern  fort.  No  doubt  the  reenforce- 
[306] 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


ments  of  reserves  that  hurried  into  it  to 
strengthen  the  regular  garrison  counted  them- 
selves lucky  men  to  have  so  massive  and 
stout  a  shelter  from  which  to  fight  an  enemy 
who  must  work  in  the  open  against  them. 
Poor  devils,  their  hopes  crumbled  along  with 
their  walls  when  the  Germans  brought  up  the 
forty-twos. 

We  entered  in  through  a  breach  in  the  first 
parapet  and  crossed,  one  at  a  time,  on  a 
tottery  wooden  bridge  which  v/as  propped 
across  a  fosse  half  full  of  rubble,  and  so  came 
to  what  had  been  the  heart  of  the  fort  of  Des 
Sarts.  Had  I  not  already  gathered  some  no- 
tion of  the  powers  for  destruction  of  those 
one-ton,  four-foot-long  shells,  I  should  have 
said  that  the  spot  where  we  halted  had  been 
battered  and  crashed  at  for  hours;  that  scores 
and  perhaps  hundreds  of  bombs  had  been 
plumped  into  it.  Now,  though,  I  was  prepared 
to  believe  the  German  captain  when  he  said 
probably  not  more  than  five  or  six  of  the  devil 
devices  had  struck  this  target.  Make  it  six 
for  good  measure.  Conceive  each  of  the  six 
as  having  been  dammed  by  a  hurricane  and 
sired  by  an  earthquake,  and  as  being  related 
to  an  active  volcano  on  one  side  of  the  family 
and  to  a  flaming  meteor  on  the  other.  Con- 
ceive it  as  falling  upon  a  man-made,  masonry- 
walled  burrow  in  the  earth  and  being  followed 
in  rapid  succession  by  five  of  its  blood  breth- 
ren; then  you  will  begin  to  get  some  fashion 
[307] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


of  mental  photograph  of  the  result.  I  confess 
myself  as  unable  to  supply  any  better  suggestion 
for  a  comparison.  Nor  shall  I  attempt  to 
describe  the  picture  in  any  considerable  detail. 
I  only  know  that  for  the  first  time  in  my  life 
I  realized  the  full  and  adequate  meaning  of 
the  word  chaos.  The  proper  definition  of  it 
was  spread  broadcast  before  my  eyes. 

Appreciating  the  impossibility  of  compre- 
hending the  full  scope  of  the  disaster  which 
here  had  befallen,  or  of  putting  it  concretely 
into  words  if  I  did  comprehend  it,  I  sought 
to  pick  out  small  individual  details,  which 
was  hard  to  do,  too,  seeing  that  all  things 
were  jumbled  together  so.  This  had  been  a 
series  of  cunningly  buried  tunnels  and  arcades, 
with  cozy  subterranean  dormitories  opening  off 
of  side  passages,  and  still  farther  down  there 
had  been  magazines  and  storage  spaces.  Now 
it  was  all  a  hole  in  the  ground,  and  the  force 
which  blasted  it  out  had  then  pulled  the  hole 
in  behind  itself.  We  stood  on  the  verge, 
looking  downward  into  a  chasm  which  seemed 
to  split  its  way  to  infinite  depths,  although  in 
fact  it  was  probably  not  nearly  so  deep  as  it 
appeared.  If  we  looked  upward  there,  forty 
feet  above  our  heads,  was  a  wide  riven  gap 
in  the  earth  crust. 

Near  me  I  discerned  a  litter  of  metal  frag- 
ments. From  such  of  the  scraps  as  retained 
any  shape  at  all,  I  figured  that  they  had  been 
part  of  the  protective  casing  of  a  gun  mounted 
[308] 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


somewhere  above.  The  missile  which  wrecked 
the  gun  flung  its  armor  down  here.  I  searched 
my  brain  for  a  simile  which  might  serve  to 
give  a  notion  of  the  present  state  of  that  steel 
jacket.  I  didn't  find  the  one  I  wanted,  .but  if 
you  will  think  of  an  earthenware  pot  which 
has  been  thrown  from  a  very  high  building 
upon  a  brick  sidewalk  you  may  have  some  idea 
of  what  I  saw. 

At  that,  it  was  no  completer  a  ruin  than 
any  of  the  surrounding  debris.  Indeed,  in 
the  whole  vista  of  annihilation  but  two  ob- 
jects remained  recognizably  intact,  and  these, 
strange  to  say,  were  two  iron  bed  frames 
bolted  to  the  back  wall  of  what  I  think  must 
have  been  a  barrack  room  for  officers.  The 
room  itself  was  no  longer  there.  Brick,  mortar, 
stone,  concrete,  steel  reenforcements,  iron 
props,  the  hard-packed  earth,  had  been  ripped 
out  and  churned  into  indistinguishable  bits, 
but  those  two  iron  beds  hung  fast  to  a  dis- 
colored patch  of  plastering,  though  the  floor 
was  gone  from  beneath  them.  Seemingly  they 
were  hardly  damaged.  One  gathered  that  a 
42-centimeter  shell  possessed  in  some  degree 
the  freakishness  which  we  associate  with  the 
behavior  of  cyclones. 

We  were  told  that  at  the  last,  when  the  guns 
had  been  silenced  and  dismounted  and  the  walls 
had  been  pierced  and  the  embrasures  blown 
bodily  away,  the  garrison,  or  what  was  left 
of  it,  fled  to  these  lowermost  shelters.  But  the 
[  309 1 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


burrowing  bombs  found  the  refugees  out  and 
killed  them,  nearly  all,  and  those  of  them 
who  died  were  still  buried  beneath  our  feet  in 
as  hideous  a  sepulcher  as  ever  was  digged. 
There  was  no  getting  them  out  from  that  tomb. 
The  Crack  of  Doom  will  find  them  still  there, 
I  guess. 

To  reach  a  portion  of  Des  Sarts,  as  yet  un- 
visited,  we  skirted  the  gape  of  the  crater, 
climbing  over  craggy  accumulations  of  wreck- 
age, and  traversed  a  tunnel  with  an  arched 
roof  and  mildewed  brick  walls,  like  a  wine 
vault.  The  floor  of  it  was  littered  with  the 
knaj^sacks  and  water  bottles  of  dead  or  cap- 
tured men,  with  useless  rifles  broken  at  the 
stocks  and  bent  in  the  barrels,  and  with  such- 
like riffle.  At  the  far  end  of  the  passage  we 
came  out  into  the  open  at  the  back  side  of  the 
fort. 

"Right  here,"  said  the  officer  who  was  pilot- 
ing us,  "I  witnessed  a  sight  which  made  a 
deeper  impression  upon  me  than  anything  I 
have  seen  in  this  campaign.  After  the  white 
flag  had  been  hoisted  by  the  survivors  and  we 
had  marched  in,  I  halted  my  men  just  here  at 
the  entrance  to  this  arcade.  We  didn't  dare 
venture  into  the  redan,  for  sporadic  explosions 
were  still  occurring  in  the  ammunition  stores. 
Also  there  were  fires  raging.  Smoke  was 
pouring  thickly  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  tunnel. 
It  didn't  seem  possible  that  there  could  be 
anyone  alive  back  yonder. 
[3101 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


"All  of  a  sudden,  men  began  to  come  out 
of  the  tunnel.  They  came  and  came  until 
there  were  nearly  two  hundred  of  them — 
French  reservists  mostly.  They  were  crazy 
men — ^crazy  for  the  time  being,  and  still  crazy, 
I  expect,  some  of  them.  They  came  out  stag- 
gering, choking,  falling  down  and  getting  up 
again.  You  see,  their  nerves  were  gone.  The 
fumes,  the  gases,  the  shock,  the  fire,  what 
they  had  endured  and  what  they  had  escaped — 
all  these  had  distracted  them.  They  danced, 
sang,  wept,  laughed,  shouted  in  a  sort  of 
maudlin  frenzy,  spun  about  deliriously  until 
they  dropped.  They  were  deafened,  and  some 
of  them  could  not  see  but  had  to  grope  their 
way.  I  remember  one  man  who  sat  down  and 
pulled  off  his  boots  and  socks  and  threw  them 
away  and  then  hobbled  on  in  his  bare  feet 
until  he  cut  the  bottoms  of  them  to  pieces. 
I  don't  care  to  see  anything  like  that  again — 
even  if  it  is  my  enemies  that  suffer  it." 

He  told  it  so  vividly,  that  standing  alongside 
of  him  before  the  tunnel  opening  I  could  see 
the  procession  myself — those  two  hundred  men 
who  had  drained  horror  to  its  lees  and  were 
drunk  on  it. 

We  went  to  Fort  Boussois,  som.e  four  miles 
away.  It  was  another  of  the  keys  to  the 
town.  It  was  taken  on  September  sixth;  on 
the  next  day,  September  seventh,  the  citadel 
surrendered.  Here,  in  lieu  of  the  42-centimeter, 
which  was  otherwise  engaged  for  the  moment, 
[3111 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


the  attacking  forces  brought  into  play  an 
Austrian  battery  of  30-centimeter  guns.  So  far 
as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain  this  was  the 
only  Austrian  command  which  had  any  part 
in  the  western  campaigns.  The  Austrian  gun- 
ners shelled  the  fort  until  the  German  in- 
fantry had  been  massed  in  a  forest  to  the 
northward.  Late  in  the  afternoon  the  in- 
fantry charged  across  a  succession  of  cleared 
fields  and  captured  the  outer  slopes.  With 
these  in  their  possession  it  didn't  take  them 
very  long  to  compel  the  surrender  of  Fort 
Boussois,  especially  as  the  defenders  had  al- 
ready been  terribly  cut  up  by  the  artillery  fire. 

The  Austrians  must  have  been  first-rate 
marksmen.  One  of  their  shells  fell  squarely 
upon  the  rounded  dome  of  a  big  armored  turret 
which  was  sunk  in  the  earth  and  chipped  off 
the  top  of  it  as  you  would  chip  your  breakfast 
egg.  The  men  who  manned  the  guns  in  that 
revolving  turret  must  all  have  died  in  a  flash 
of  time.  The  impact  of  the  blow  was  such 
that  the  leaden  solder  which  filled  the  inter- 
stices of  the  segments  of  the  turret  was  squeezed 
out  from  between  the  plates  in  curly  strips, 
like  icing  from  between  the  layers  of  a  misused 
birthday  cake. 

Back  within  the  main  works  we  saw  where  a 
shell  had  bored  a  smooth,  round  orifice  through 
eight  meters  of  earth  and  a  meter  and  a  half 
of  concrete  and  steel  plates.  Peering  into  the 
shaft  we  could  make  out  the  floor  of  a  timnel 
[3121 


BIG    GUNS    IN    FRANCE 


some  thirty  feet  down.  To  judge  by  its  ef- 
fects, this  shell  had  been  of  a  different  type 
from  any  others  whose  work  we  had  witnessed. 
Apparently  it  had  been  devised  to  excavate 
holes  rather  than  to  explode,  and  when  we 
asked  questions  about  it  we  speedily  ascer- 
tained that  our  guide  did  not  care  to  discuss 
the  gun  which  had  inflicted  this  particular 
bit  of  damage, 

"It  is  not  permitted  to  speak  of  this  matter," 
he  said  in  explanation  of  his  attitude.  "It  is 
a  military  secret,  this  invention.  We  call  it 
a  mine  gun." 

Every  man  to  his  taste.  I  should  have 
called  it  a  well-digger. 

Erect  upon  the  highest  stretch  of  riddled 
walls,  with  his  legs  spraddled  far  apart  and  his 
arms  jerking  in  expressive  gestures,  he  told 
us  how  the  German  infantry  had  advanced 
across  the  open  ground.  It  had  been  hard,  he 
said,  to  hold  the  men  back  until  the  order  for 
the  charge  was  given,  and  then  they  burst 
from  their  cover  and  came  on  at  a  dead  run, 
cheering. 

"It  was  very  fine,"  he  added.  "Very 
glorious." 

"Did  you  have  any  losses  in  the  charge.'*" 
asked  one  of  our  party. 

"Oh,  yes,"  he  answered,  as  though  that  part 

of  the  proceeding    was    purely   an    incidental 

detail    and    of    no    great    consequence.      "We 

lost    many    men    here — very    many — several 

[3131 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


thousands,  I  think.  Most  of  them  are  buried 
where  you  see  those  long  ridges  in  the  second 
field  beyond." 

In  a  sheltered  corner  of  a  redoubt,  close  up 
under  a  parapet  and  sheathed  on  its  inner 
side  with  masonry,  was  a  single  grave.  The 
pounding  feet  of  many  fighting  men  had 
beaten  the  mound  flat,  but  a  small  wooden 
cross  still  stood  in  the  soil,  and  on  it  in  French 
were  penciled  the  words: 

"Here  lies  Lieutenant  Verner,  killed  in  the 
charge  of  battle." 

His  men  must  have  thought  well  of  the 
lieutenant  to  take  the  time,  in  the  midst  of 
the  defense,  to  bury  him  in  the  place  where 
he  fell,  for  there  were  no  other  graves  to  be 
seen  within  the  fort. 


[314] 


^  CHAPTER  XIII 
THOSE  YELLOW  PINE  BOXES 


IT  was  late  in  the  short  afternoon,  and  get- 
ting close  on  to  twilight,  when  we  got 
back  into  the  town.  Except  for  the  sol- 
diers there  was  little  life  stirring  in  the 
twisting  streets.  There  was  a  funeral  or  so 
in  progress.  It  seemed  to  us  that  always, 
no  matter  where  we  stopped,  in  whatsoever 
town  or  at  whatsoever  hour,  some  dead  sol- 
dier was  being  put  away.  Still,  I  suppose 
we  shouldn't  have  felt  any  surprise  at  that. 
By  now  half  of  Europe  was  one  great  funeral. 
Part  of  it  was  on  crutches  and  part  of  it  was 
in  the  graveyard  and  the  rest  of  it  was  in 
the  field. 

Daily  in  these  towns  back  behind  the  firing 
lines  a  certain  percentage  of  the  invalided  and 
the  injured,  who  had  been  brought  thus  far 
before  their  condition  became  actually  serious, 
would  die;  and  twice  daily,  or  oftener,  the 
dead  would  be  buried  with  military  honors. 
[315] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


So  naturally  we  were  eyewitnesses  to  a  great 
many  of  these  funerals.  Somehow  they  im- 
pressed me  more  than  the  sight  of  dead  men 
being  hurriedly  shoveled  under  ground  on  the 
battle  front  where  they  had  fallen.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  consciousness  that  those  who  had 
these  formal,  separate  burials  were  men  who 
came  alive  out  of  the  fighting,  and  who,  even 
after  being  stricken,  had  a  chance  for  life  and 
then  lost  it.  Perhaps  it  was  the  small  show 
of  ceremony  and  ritual  which  marked  each  one 
— the  firing  squad,  the  clergyman  in  his  robes, 
the  tramping  escort — that  left  so  enduring 
an  impress  upon  my  mind.  I  did  not  try  to 
analyze  the  reasons;  but  I  know  my  com- 
panions felt  as  I  did. 

I  remember  quite  distinctly  the  very  first  of 
these  funerals  that  I  witnessed.  Possibly  I 
remember  it  with  such  distinctness  because 
it  was  the  first.  On  our  way  to  the  advance 
positions  of  the  Germans  we  had  come  as  far 
as  Chimay,  which  is  an  old  Belgian  town  just 
over  the  frontier  from  France.  I  was  sitting 
on  a  bench  just  outside  the  doorway  of  a 
parochial  school  conducted  by  nuns,  which 
had  been  taken  over  by  the  conquerors  and 
converted  into  a  temporary  receiving  hospital 
for  men  who  were  too  seriously  wounded  to 
stand  the  journey  up  into  Germany.  All  the 
surgeons  on  duty  here  were  Germans,  but  the 
nursing  force  was  about  equally  divided  be- 
tween nuns  and  Lutheran  deaconesses  who  had 
[3161 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

been  brought  overland  for  this  duty.  Also 
there  were  several  volunteer  nurses — the  wife 
of  an  officer,  a  wealthy  widow  from  Dusseldorf 
and  a  school-teacher  from  Coblenz  among  them. 
Catholic  and  Protestant,  Belgian  and  French 
and  German,  they  all  labored  together,  cheer- 
fully and  earnestly  doing  drudgery  of  the  most 
exacting,  the  most  unpleasant  sorts. 

One  of  the  patronesses  of  the  hospital,  who 
was  also  its  manager  ex  officio,  had  just  left 
with  a  soldier  chauffeur  for  a  guard  and  a 
slightly  wounded  major  for  an  escort.  She  was 
starting  on  a  three-hundred-mile  automobile 
run  through  a  half  subdued  and  dangerous 
country,  meaning  to  visit  base  hospitals  along 
the  German  frontier  until  she  found  a  supply 
of  anti-tetanus  serum.  Lockjaw,  developing 
from  seemingly  trivial  wounds  in  foot  or  hand, 
had  already  killed  six  men  at  Chimay  within 
a  week.  Four  more  were  dying  of  the  same 
disease.  So,  since  no  able-bodied  men  could 
be  spared  from  the  overworked  staffs  of  the 
lazarets,  she  was  going  for  a  stock  of  the  serum 
which  might  save  still  other  victims.  She 
meant  to  travel  day  and  night,  and  if  a  bullet 
didn't  stop  her  and  if  the  automobile  didn't 
go  through  a  temporary  bridge  she  would 
be  back,  she  thought,  within  forty-eight  hours. 
She  had  already  made  several  trips  of  the 
sort  upon  similar  missions.  Once  her  car  had  ^ 
been  fired  at  and  once  it  had  been  wrecked, 
but  she  was  going  again.  She  was  from  near 
[3171 


PATHS   OF   GLORY 


Cologne,  the  wife  of  a  rich  manufacturer  now 
serving  as  a  captain  of  reserves.  She  hadn't 
heard  from  him  in  four  weeks.  She  didn't  know 
whether  he  still  lived.  She  hoped  he  lived, 
she  told  us  with  simple  fortitude,  but  of  course 
these  times  one  never  knew. 

It  was  just  before  sundown.  The  nuns 
had  gone  upstairs  to  their  little  chapel  for 
evening  services.  Through  an  open  window  of 
the  chapel  just  above  my  head  their  voices, 
as  they  chanted  the  responses  between  the 
sonorous  Latin  phrases  of  the  priest  who  had 
come  to  lead  them  in  their  devotions,  floated 
out  in  clear  sweet  snatches,  like  the  songs  of 
vesper  sparrows.  Behind  me,  in  a  paved  court- 
yard, were  perhaps  twenty  wounded  men  lying 
on  cots.  They  had  been  brought  out  of  the 
building  and  put  in  the  sunshine.  They  were 
on  the  way  to  recovery;  at  least  most  of  them 
were.  I  sat  facing  a  triangular-shaped  square, 
which  was  flanked  on  one  of  its  faces  by  a  row 
of  shuttered  private  houses  and  on  another 
by  the  principal  church  of  the  town,  a  fifteenth- 
century  structure  with  outdoor  shrines  snug- 
gled up  under  its  eaves.  Except  for  the 
chanting  of  the  nuns  and  the  braggadocio 
booming  of  a  big  cock-pigeon,  which  had  flown 
down  from  the  church  tower  to  forage  for  spilt 
grain  almost  under  my  feet,  the  place  was 
quiet.  It  was  so  quiet  that  when  a  little 
column  of  men  turned  into  the  head  of  the  street 
which  wound  past  the  front  of  the  church 
[3181 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

and  off  to  the  left,  I  heard  the  measured 
tramping  of  their  feet  upon  the  stony  road- 
way fully  a  minute  before  they  came  in  sight. 
I  was  wondering  what  that  rhythmic  thumping 
J  meant,  when  one  of  the  nursing  sisters .  came 
and  closed  the  high  wooden  door  at  my  back, 
shutting  off  the  view  of  the  wounded  men. 

There  appeared  a  little  procession,  headed 
by  a  priest  in  his  robes  and  two  altar-boys. 
At  the  heels  of  these  three  were  six  soldiers 
bearing  upon  their  shoulders  a  wooden  box 
painted  a  glaring  yellow;  and  so  narrow  was 
the  box  and  so  shallow-looking,  that  on  the 
instant  the  thought  came  to  me  that  the 
poor  clay  inclosed  therein  must  feel  cramped 
in  such  scant  quarters.  Upon  the  top  of  the 
box,  at  its  widest,  highest  point,  rested  a 
wreath  of  red  flowers,  a  clumsy,  spraddly 
wreath  from  which  the  red  blossoms  threatened 
to  shake  loose.  Even  at  a  distance  of  some 
rods  I  could  tell  that  a  man's  inexpert  fingers 
must  have  fashioned  it. 

Upon  the  shoulders  of  the  bearers  the  box 
swayed  and  jolted. 

Following  it  came,  first,  three  uniformed 
oflScers,  two  German  nurses  and  two  sur- 
geons from  another  hospital,  as  I  subse- 
quently learned;  and  following  them  half  a 
company  of  soldiers  bearing  their  rifles  and 
wearing  side  arms.  As  the  small  cortege 
reached  a  point  opposite  us  an  ofiicer  snapped 
an  order  and  everybody  halted,  and  the  gun- 
[3191 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


butts  of  the  company  came  down  with  a 
smashing  abruptness  upon  the  cobbles.  At 
that  moment  two  or  three  roughly  clad  civilians 
issued  from  a  doorway  near  by.  Being  Bel- 
gians they  had  small  cause  to  love  the  Ger- 
mans, but  they  stopped  in  their  tracks  and 
pulled  off  their  caps.  To  pay  the  tribute  of 
a  bared  head  to  the  dead,  even  to  the  unknown 
dead,  is  in  these  Catholic  countries  of  Europe 
as  much  a  part  of  a  man's  rule  of  conduct 
as  his  religion  is. 

The  priest  who  led  the  line  turned  my  way 
inquiringly.  He  did  not  have  to  wait  long  for 
what  was  to  come,  nor  did  I.  Another  gate 
farther  along  in  the  nunnery  wall  opened  and 
out  came  six  more  soldiers,  bearing  another 
of  these  narrow-shouldered  coffins,  and  ac- 
companied by  a  couple  of  nurses,  an  officer 
and  an  assistant  surgeon.  At  sight  of  them 
the  soldiers  brought  their  pieces  up  to  a 
salute,  and  held  the  posture  rigidly  until  the 
second  dead  man  in  his  yellow  box  had  joined 
the  company  of  the  first  dead  man  in  his. 

Just  before  this  happened,  though,  one  of 
the  nurses  of  the  nunnery  hospital  did  a  thing 
which  I  shall  never  forget.  She  must  have 
seen  that  the  first  coffin  had  flowers  upon  it,  and 
in  the  same  instant  realized  that  the  coffin 
in  whose  occupant  she  had  a  more  direct 
interest  was  bare.  So  she  left  the  straggling 
line  and  came  running  back.  The  wall  streamed 
with  woodbine,  very  glorious  in  its  autumnal 
[3201 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

flamings.  She  snatched  a  trailer  of  the  red 
and  yellow  leaves  down  from  where  it  clung, 
and  as  she  hurried  back  her  hands  worked  with 
magic  haste,  making  it  into  a  wreath.  She 
reached  the  second  squad  of  bearers  and 
put  her  wreath  upon  the  lid  of  the  box,  and 
then  sought  her  place  with  the  other  nurses. 
The  guns  went  up  with  a  snap  upon  the  shoul- 
ders of  the  company.  The  soldiers'  feet 
thudded  down  ail  together  upon  the  stones, 
and  with  the  priest  reciting  his  office  the 
procession  passed  out  of  sight,  going  toward 
the  burial  ground  at  the  back  of  the  town. 
Presently,  when  the  shadows  were  thickening 
into  gloom  and  the  angelus  bells  were  ringing 
m  the  church,  I  heard,  a  long  way  off,  the 
rattle  of  the  rifles  as  the  soldiers  fired  good- 
night volleys  over  the  graves  of  their  dead 
comrades. 

On  the  next  day,  at  Hirson,  which  was 
another  of  our  stopping  points  on  the  journey 
to  the  front,  we  saw  the  joint  funeral  of  seven 
men  leaving  the  hospital  where  they  had  died 
during  the  preceding  twelve  hours,  and  I 
shan't  forget  that  picture  either.  There  was 
a  vista  bounded  by  a  stretch  of  one  of  those 
unutterably  bleak  backways  of  a  small  and 
shabby  French  town.  The  rutted  street  twisted 
along  between  small  gray  plaster  houses,  with 
ugly,  unnecessary  gable-ends,  which  faced  the 
road  at  wrong  angles.  Small  groups  of  towns- 
people stood  against  the  walls  to  watch. 
[321] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


There  was  also  a  handful  of  idling  soldiers  who 
watched  from  the  gateway  of  the  house  where 
they  were  billeted. 

Seven  times  the  bearers  entered  the  hospital 
door,  and  each  time  as  they  reappeared, 
bringing  one  of  the  narrow,  gaudy,  yellow 
boxes,  the  officers  lined  up  at  the  door  would 
salute  and  the  soldiers  in  double  lines  at  the 
opposite  side  of  the  road  would  present  arms, 
and  then,  as  the  box  was  lifted  upon  the 
wagon  waiting  to  receive  it,  would  smash 
their  guns  down  on  the  bouldered  road  with 
a  crash.  When  the  job  of  bringing  forth  the 
dead  was  done  the  wagon  stood  loaded  pretty 
nearly  to  capacity.  Four  of  the  boxes  rested 
crosswise  upon  the  flat  wagon-bed  and  the  other 
three  were  racked  lengthwise  on  top  of  them. 
Here,  too,  was  a  priest  in  his  robes,  and  here 
were  two  altar  boys  who  straggled,  so  that  as  the 
procession  started  the  priest  w^as  moved  to 
break  off  his  chanting  long  enough  to  chide 
his  small  attendants  and  wave  them  back 
into  proper  alignment.  With  the  officers, 
the  nurses  and  -  the  surgeons  all  marching 
afoot  marched  also  three  bearded  civilians 
in  frock  coats,  having  the  air  about  them  of 
village  dignitaries.  From  their  presence  in 
such  company  we  deduced  that  one  of  the 
seven  silent  travelers  on  the  wagon  must  be  a 
French  soldier,  or  else  that  the  Germans  had 
seen  fit  to  require  the  attendance  of  local 
fimctionaries  at  the  burial  of  dead  Germans. 
[322] 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

As  the  cortege — I  suppose  you  might  call 
it  that — -went  by  where  I  stood  with  my 
friends,  I  saw  that  upon  the  sides  of  the  coffins 
names  were  lettered  in  big,  straggly  black 
letters.  I  read  two  of  the  names — Werner  was 
one,  Vogel  was  the  other.  Somehow  I  felt 
an  acuter  personal  interest  in  Vogel  and 
Werner  than  in  the  other  five  whose  names 
I  could  not  read. 

Wherever  we  stopped  in  Belgium  or  in 
France  or  in  Germany  these  soldiers'  funerals 
were  things  of  daily,  almost  of  hourly  occur- 
rence. And  in  Maubeuge  on  this  evening, 
even  though  dusk  had  fallen,  two  of  the  in- 
evitable yellow  boxes,  mounted  upon  a  two- 
wheeled  cart,  were  going  to  the  burying 
ground.  We  figured  the  cemetery  men  would 
fill  the  graves  by  lantern  light;  and  knowing 
something  of  their  hours  of  employment  we 
imagined  that  with  this  job  disposed  of  they 
would  probably  turn  to  and  dig  graves  by  night, 
making  them  ready  against  the  needs  of  the 
following  morning.  The  new  graves  always 
were  ready.  They  were  made  in  advance, 
and  still  there  were  rarely  enough  of  them,  no 
matter  how  long  or  how  hard  the  diggers  kept 
at  their  work.  At  Aix-la-Chapelle,  for  ex- 
ample, in  the  principal  cemetery  the  sexton's 
men  dug  twenty  new  graves  every  morning. 
By  evening  there  would  be  twenty  shaped 
mounds  of  clay  where  the  twenty  holes  had 
been.  The  crop  of  the  dead  was  the  one  sure 
[3231 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


crop  upon  which  embattled  Europe  might 
count.  That  harvest  could  not  fail  the  war- 
ring nations,  however  scanty  other  yields  might 
be. 

In  the  towns  in  occupied  territory  the 
cemeteries  were  the  only  actively  and  con- 
stantly busy  spots  to  be  found,  except  the 
hospitals.  Every  schoolhouse  was  a  hospital; 
indeed  I  think  there  can  be  no  schoolhouse 
in  the  zone  of  actual  hostilities  that  has  not 
served  such  a  purpose.  In  their  altered  as- 
pects we  came  to  know  these  schoolhouses 
mighty  well.  We  would  see  the  wounded  going 
in  on  stretchers  and  the  dead  coming  out  in 
boxes.  We  would  see  how  the  blackboards, 
still  scrawled  over  perhaps  with  the  chalked 
sums  of  lessons  which  never  were  finished, 
now  bore  pasted-on  charts  dealing  in  nurses' 
and  surgeons'  cipher-manual,  with  the  bodily 
plights  of  the  men  in  the  cots  and  on  the 
mattresses  beneath.  We  would  see  classrooms 
where  plaster  casts  and  globe  maps  and  dusty 
textbooks  had  been  cast  aside  in  heaps  to 
make  room  on  desktops  and  shelves  for  drugs 
and  bandages  and  surgical  appliances.  We 
would  see  the  rows  of  hooks  intended  originally 
for  the  caps  and  umbrellas  of  little  people;  but 
now  from  each  hook  dangled  the  ripped,  blood- 
ied garments  of  a  soldier — gray  for  a  German, 
brown-tan  for  an  Englishman,  blue-and-red 
for  a  Frenchman  or  a  Belgian.  By  the  German 
rule  a  wounded  man's  uniform  must  be  brought 
[3241 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

back  with  him  from  the  place  where  he  fell  and 
kept  handily  near  him,  with  tags  on  it,  to 
prove  its  proper  identity,  and  there  it  must 
stay  until  its  owner  needs  it  again — if  ever  he 
needs  it  again. 

We  would  see  these  things,  and  we  would 
wonder  if  these  schoolhouses  could  ever  shake 
off  the  scents  and  the  stains  and  the  mem- 
ories of  these  present  grim  visitations — won- 
der if  children  would  ever  frolic  any  more  in 
the  courtyards  where  the  ambulances  stood 
now  with  red  drops  trickling  down  from  their 
beds  upon  the  gravel.  But  that,  on  our  part, 
was  mere  morbidness  born  of  the  sights  we 
saw.  Children  forget  even  more  quickly  than 
their  elders  forget,  and  we  knew,  from  our  own 
experience,  how  quickly  the  populace  of  a 
French  or  Flemish  community  could  rally 
back  to  a  colorable  counterfeit  of  their  old 
sprightliness,  once  the  immediate  burdens  of 
affliction  and  captivity  had  been  lifted  from 
off  them. 

From  a  jumbled  confusion  of  recollection 
of  these  schoolhouse-hospitals  sundry  inci- 
dental pictures  stick  out  in  my  mind  as  I 
write  this  article.  I  can  shut  my  eyes  and 
visualize  the  German  I  saw  in  the  little  parish 
school  building  in  the  abandoned  hamlet  of 
Colligis  near  by  the  River  Aisne.  He  was  in 
a  room  with  a  dozen  others,  all  suffering  from 
chest  wounds.  He  had  been  pierced  through 
both  lungs  with  a  bullet,  and  to  keep  him 
[3251 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


from  choking  to  death  the  attendants  had  tied 
him  in  a  half  erect  posture,  A  sort  of  ham- 
mocklike sling  passed  mider  his  arms,  and  a 
rope  ran  from  it  to  a  hook  in  a  wall  and  was 
knotted  fast  to  the  hook.  He  swung  there, 
neither  sitting  nor  Ij'ing,  fighting  for  the 
breath  of  life,  with  an  unspeakable  misery- 
looking  out  from  his  eyes;  and  he  was  too  far 
spent  to  lift  a  hand  to  brush  away  the  flies 
that  swarmed  upon  his  face  and  his  lips  and 
upon  his  bare,  throbbing  throat.  The  flies 
dappled  the  faces  of  his  fellow  sufferers  with 
loathsome  black  dots;  they  literally  masked  his. 
I  preserve  a  memory  which  is  just  as  vivid 
of  certain  things  I  saw  in  a  big  institution  in 
Laon.  Although  in  German  hands,  and  nom- 
inally under  German  control,  the  building  was 
given  over  entirely  to  crippled  and  ailing 
French  prisoners.  These  patients  were  minded 
and  fed  by  their  own  people  and  attended  by 
captured  French  surgeons.  In  our  tour  of  the 
place  I  saw  only  two  men  wearing  the  German 
gray.  One  was  the  armed  sentry  who  stood 
at  the  gate  to  see  that  no  recovering  inmate 
slipped  out,  and  the  other  was  a  German  sur- 
geon-general who  was  making  his  daily  round 
of  inspection  of  the  hospitals  and  had  brought 
us  along  with  him.  Of  the  native  contingent 
the  person  who  appeared  to  be  in  direct  charge 
was  a  handsome,  elderly  lady,  tenderly  solicitous 
of  the  frowziest  Turco  in  the  wards  and  ex- 
quisitely polite,  with  a  frozen  politeness,  to 
[326j 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

the  German  officer.  When  he  sakited  her 
she  bowed  to  him  deeply  and  ceremoniously 
and  silently.  I  never  thought  until  then  that 
a  bow  could  be  so  profoundly  executed  and 
yet  so  icily  cold.  It  was  a  lesson  in  congealed 
manners. 

As  we  were  leaving  the  room  a  nun  serving 
as  a  nurse  hailed  the  German  and  told  him 
one  of  her  charges  was  threatening  to  die, 
not  because  of  his  wound,  but  because  he  had 
lost  heart  and  believed  himself  to  be  dying. 

"Where  is  he?"  asked  the  German. 

"Yonder,"  she  said,  indicating  a  bundled-up 
figure  on  a  pallet  near  the  door.  A  drawn, 
hopeless  face  of  a  half-grown  boy  showed  from 
the  huddle  of  blankets.  The  surgeon-general 
cast  a  quick  look  at  the  swathed  form  and  then 
spoke  in  an  undertone  to  a  French  regimental 
surgeon  on  duty  in  the  room.  Together  the  two 
approached  the  lad. 

"My  son,"  said  the  German  to  him  in 
French,  "I  am  told  you  do  not  feel  so  well 
to-day." 

The  boy-soldier  whispered  an  answer  and 
waggled  his  head  despondently.  The  German 
put  his  hand  on  the  youth's  forehead. 

"My  son,"  he  said,  "listen  to  me.  You  are 
not  going  to  die — I  promise  you  that  you  shall 
not  die.  My  colleague  here"^he  indicated 
the  French  doctor — "stands  ready  to  make  you 
the  same  promise.  If  you  won't  believe  a 
German,  surely  you  will  take  your  own  coun- 
[327] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


try  man's  professional  word  for  it,"  and  he 
smiled  a  little  smile  under  his  gray  mustache. 
"Between  us  we  are  going  to  make  you  well 
and  send  you,  when  this  war  is  over,  back  to 
your  mother.  But  you  must  help  us;  you  must 
help  us  by  being  brave  and  confident.  Is  it 
not  so,  doctor?"  he  added,  again  addressing 
the  French  physician,  and  the  Frenchman 
nodded  to  show  it  was  so  and  sat  down  along- 
side the  youngster  to  comfort  him  further. 

As  we  left  the  room  the  German  surgeon 
turned,  and  looking  round  I  saw  that  once 
again  he  saluted  the  patrician  French  lady, 
and  this  time  as  she  bowed  the  ice  was  all 
melted  from  her  bearing.  She  must  have 
witnessed  the  little  byplay;  perhaps  she  had 
a  son  of  her  own  in  service.  There  were 
mighty  few  mothers  in  France  that  fall  of  1914 
who  did  not  have  sons  in  service. 

Yet  one  of  the  few  really  humorous  recol- 
lections of  this  war  that  I  preserve  had  to 
do  with  a  hospital  too;  but  this  hospital  was 
in  England  and  we  visited  it  on  our  way  home 
to  America.  We  went — two  of  us — in  the  com- 
pany of  Lord  Northcliffe,  down  into  Surrey, 
to  spend  a  day  with  old  Lord  Roberts.  Within 
three  weeks  thereafter  Lord  Roberts  was  dead 
where  no  doubt  he  would  have  willed  to  die — 
at  the  front  in  France,  with  the  sound  of  the 
guns  in  his  ears,  guarded  in  his  last  moments 
by  the  Ghurkas  and  the  Sikhs  of  his  beloved 
Indian  contingent.  But  on  this  day  of  our 
[3281 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

visit  to  him  we  found  him  a  hale,  kmdly  gen- 
tleman of  eighty-two  who  showed  us  his  mar- 
velous collection  of  firearms  and  Oriental 
relics  and  the  field  guns,  all  historic  guns  by 
the  way,  which  he  kept  upon  the  terraces  of 
his  mansion  house,  and  who  told  us,  among 
other  things,  that  in  his  opinion  our  own 
Stonewall  Jackson  was  perhaps  the  greatest 
natural  military  genius  the  world  had  ever 
produced.  Leaving  his  house  we  stopped,  on 
our  return  to  London,  at  a  hospital  for  soldiers 
in  the  grounds  of  Ascot  Race  Course  scarcely 
two  miles  from  Lord  Roberts'  place.  The  re- 
freshment booths  and  the  other  rooms  at  the 
back  and  underside  of  the  five-shilling  stand 
had  been  thrown  together,  except  the  barber's 
shop,  which  was  being  converted  into  an  oper- 
ating chamber;  and,  what  with  its  tiled  walls 
and  high  sloped  ceiling  and  glass  front,  the 
place  made  a  first-rate  hospital. 

It  contained  beds  for  fifty  men;  but  on  this 
day  there  were  less  than  twenty  sick  and  crip- 
pled Tommies  convalescing  here.  They  had 
been  brought  out  of  France,  out  of  wet  and 
cold  and  filth,  with  hurried  dressings  on  their 
hurts;  and  now  they  were  in  this  bright,  sweet, 
wholesome  place,  with  soft  beds  under  them 
and  clean  linen  on  their  bodies,  and  flowers 
and  dainties  on  the  tables  that  stood  alongside 
them,  and  the  gentlefolk  of  the  neighborhood 
to  mind  them  as  volunteer  nurses. 

There  were  professional  nurses,  of  course; 
[3291 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


but,  under  them,  the  younger  women  of  the 
wealthy  famihes  of  this  corner  of  Surrey  were 
serving;  and  mighty  pretty  they  all  looked, 
too,  in  their  crisp  blue-and-white  uniforms, 
with  their  arm  badges  and  their  caps,  and  their 
big  aprons  buttoned  round  their  slim,  athletic 
young  bodies.  I  judge  there  were  about  three 
amateur  nurses  to  each  patient.  Yet  you 
could  not  rightly  call  them  amateurs  either; 
each  of  them  had  taken  a  short  course  in  nursing, 
it  seemed,  and  was  amply  competent  to  perform 
many  of  the  duties  a  regular  nurse  must  know. 

Lady  Aileen  Roberts  was  with  us  during  our 
tour  of  the  hospital.  As  a  daily  visitor  and 
patroness  she  spent  much  of  her  time  here 
and  she  knew  most  of  the  inmates  by  name. 
She  halted  alongside  one  bed  to  ask  its  occu- 
pant how  he  felt.  He  had  been  returned  from 
the  front  suffering  from  pneumonia. 

He  was  an  Irishman.  Before  he  answered 
her  he  cast  a  quick  look  about  the  long  hall. 
Afternoon  tea  was  just  being  served,  consisting, 
besides  tea,  of  homemade  strawberry  jam  and 
lettuce  sandwiches  made  of  crisp  fresh  bread, 
with  plenty  of  butter;  and  certain  elderly 
ladies  had  just  arrived,  bringing  with  them, 
among  other  contributions,  sheaves  of  flowers 
and  a  dogcart  loaded  with  hothouse  fruit  and 
a  dozen  loaves  of  plumcake,  which  last  were 
still  hot  from  the  oven  and  which  radiated  a 
mouth-watering  aroma  as  a  footman  bore 
them  in  behind  his  mistress.  The  patient 
[330] 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

looked  at  all  these  and  he  sniffed;  and  a  grin 
split  his  face  and  an  Irish  twinkle  came  into 
his  eyes. 

"Thank  you,  me  lady,  for  askin',"  he  said; 
"but  I'm  very  much  af eared  I'm  gettin' 
better." 

We  might  safely  assume  that  the  hospitals 
and  the  graveyard  of  Maubeuge  would  be 
busy  places  that  evening,  thereby  offering 
strong  contrasts  to  the  rest  of  the  town.  But 
I  should  add  that  we  found  two  other  busy 
spots,  too:  the  railroad  station — where  the 
trains  bringing  wounded  men  continually  shut- 
tled past — and  the  house  where  the  com- 
mandant of  the  garrison  had  his  headquarters. 
In  the  latter  place,  as  guests  of  Major  von 
Abercron,  we  met  at  dinner  that  night  and 
again  after  dinner  a  strangely  mixed  company. 
We  met  many  officers  and  the  pretty  American 
wife  of  an  officer,  Frau  Elsie  von  Heinrich, 
late  of  Jersey  City,  who  had  made  an  ad- 
venturous trip  in  a  motor  ambulance  from 
Germany  to  see  her  husband  before  he  went 
to  the  front,  and  w^ho  sent  regards  by  us  to 
scores  of  people  in  her  old  home  whose  names 
I  have  forgotten.  W^e  met  also  a  civilian 
guest  of  the  commandant,  who  introduced 
himself  as  August  Blankhertz  and  who  turned 
out  to  be  a  distinguished  big-game  hunter  and 
gentleman  aeronaut.  With  Major  von  Aber- 
cron for  a  mate  he  sailed  from  St.  Louis  in  the 
great  balloon  race  for  the  James  Gordon  Ben- 
[3311 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


nett  Cup.  They  came  down  in  the  Canadian 
woods  and  nearly  died  of  hunger  and  exposure 
before  they  found  a  lumber  camp.  Their 
balloon  was  called  the  Germania.  There  was 
another  civilian,  a  member  of  the  German 
secret-service  staff,  wearing  the  Norfolk  jacket 
and  the  green  Alpine  hat  and  on  a  cord  about 
his  neck  the  big  gold  token  of  authority  which 
invariably  mark  a  representative  of  this  branch 
of  the  German  espionage  bureau;  and  he  was 
wearing  likewise  that  transparent  air  of  mys- 
tery which  seemed  always  to  go  with  the 
followers  of  his  ingenious  profession. 

During  the  evening  the  mayor  of  Maubeuge 
came,  a  bearded,  melancholy  gentleman,  to 
confer  with  the  commandant  regarding  a  clash 
between  a  German  under-ofScer  and  a  house- 
hold of  his  constituents.  Orderlies  and  at- 
tendants bustled  in  and  out,  and  somebody 
played  Viennese  v;altz  songs  on  a  piano,  and 
altogether  there  was  quite  a  gay  little  party 
in  the  parlor  of  this  handsome  house  which  the 
Germans  had  commandeered  for  the  use  of 
their  garrison  staff. 

At  early  bedtime,  when  we  stepped  out  of 
the  door  of  the  lit-up  mansion  into  the  street, 
it  was  as  though  we  had  stepped  into  a  far-off 
country.  Except  for  the  tramp  of  a  sentry's 
bobbed  boots  over  the  sidewalks  and  the 
challenging  call  of  another  sentry  round  the 
corner  the  town  was  as  silent  as  a  town  of 
tombs.  All  the  people  who  remained  in  this 
[332] 


THOSE    YELLOW    PINE    BOXES 

place  had  closed  their  forlorn  shops  where 
barren  shelves  and  emptied  showcases  testified 
to  the  state  of  trade;  and  they  had  shut  them- 
selves up  in  their  houses  away  from  sight  of  the 
invaders.  We  could  guess  what  their  thoughts 
must  be.  Their  industries  were  paralyzed, 
and  their  liberties  were  curtailed,  and  every 
other  house  was  a  breached  and  worthless  shell. 
Among  ourselves  we  debated  as  we  walked 
along  to  the  squalid  tavern  where  we  had  been 
quartered,  which  of  the  spectacles  we  had 
that  day  seen  most  fitly  typified  the  fruitage 
of  war — the  shattered,  haunted  forts  lying  now 
in  the  moonlight  beyond  the  town,  or  the 
brooding  conquered,  half-destroyed  town  itself. 
I  guess,  if  it  comes  to  that,  they  both  typi- 
fied ito 


[333] 


CHAPTER    XIV 
THE  RED  GLUTTON 


AS  we  went  along  next  day  through  the 
town  of  Maubeuge  we  heard  singing; 
and  singing  was  a  most  rare  thing  to 
be  hearing  in  this  town.  In  a  country 
where  no  one  smiles  any  more  who  belongs  in 
that  country,  singing  is  not  a  thing  which  you 
would  naturally  expect  to  hear.  So  we  turned 
off  of  our  appointed  route. 

There  was  a  small  wine  shop  at  the  prow 
of  a  triangle  of  narrov/  streets.  It  had  been  a 
wine  shop.  It  was  now  a  beer  shop.  There 
had  been  a  French  proprietor;  he  had  a  German 
partner  now.  It  had  been  only  a  few  weeks — 
you  could  not  as  yet  measure  the  interval  of 
time  in  terms  of  months — since  the  Germans 
came  and  sat  themselves  down  before  Maubeuge 
and  blew  its  defenses  flat  with  their  42-centi- 
Tneter  earthquakes  and  marched  in  and  took  it. 
It  had  been  only  these  few  weeks;  but  already 
the  Germanizing  brand  of  the  conqueror  was 

[3341 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


seared  deep  in  the  galled  flanks  of  this  typically 
French  community.  The  town-hall  clock  was 
made  to  tick  German  time,  which  varied  by 
an  even  hour  from  French  time.  Tacked  upon 
the  door  of  the  little  cafe  where  we  ate  our 
meals  was  a  card  setting  forth,  with  painful 
German  particularity,  the  tariff  which  might 
properly  be  charged  for  food  and  for  lodging 
and  drink  and  what  not;  and  it  was  done  in 
German-Gothic  script,  all  very  angular  and 
precise;  and  it  was  signed  by  His  Excellency, 
the  German  commandant;  and  its  prices  v/ere 
predicated  on  German  logic  and  the  estimated 
depth  of  a  German  wallet.  You  might  read  a 
newspaper  printed  in  German  characters,  if  so 
minded;  but  none  printed  in  French,  whether 
so  minded  or  not. 

So  when  we  entered  in  at  the  door  of  the 
little  French  wine  shop  where  the  three  streets 
met,  to  find  out  who  within  had  heart  of  grace 
to  sing  0  Strassburg,  0  Strassbiirg,  so  lustily, 
lo  and  behold,  it  had  been  magically  trans- 
formed into  a  German  beer  shop.  It  was,  as 
we  presently  learned,  the  only  beer  shop  in  all 
of  Maubeuge,  and  the  reason  for  that  was  this: 
No  sooner  had  the  Germans  cleared  and 
opened  the  roads  back  across  Belgium  to  their 
own  frontiers  than  an  enterprising  tradesman 
of  the  Rhein  country,  who  somehow  had  es^- 
caped  military  service,  loaded  many  kegs  of 
good  German  beer  upon  trucks  and  brought 
his  precious  cargoes  overland  a  hundred  miles 
[3351 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


and  more  southward.  Certainly  he  could  not 
have  moved  the  lager  caravan  without  the 
consent  and  aid  of  the  Berlin  war  office.  For 
all  I  know  to  the  contrary  he  may  have  been 
financed  in  that  competent  quarter.  That  same 
morning  I  had  seen  a  field  weather  station, 
mounted  on  an  automobile,  standing  in  front 
of  our  lodging  place  just  off  the  square.  It 
was  going  to  the  front  to  make  and  compile 
meteorological  reports.  A  general  staff  who 
provided  weather  offices  on  wheels  and  printing 
offices  on  wheels — this  last  for  the  setting  up 
and  striking  off  of  small  proclamations  and 
orders — might  very  well  have  bethought  them- 
selves that  the  soldier  in  the  field  would  be  all 
the  fitter  for  the  job  before  him  if  stayed 
with  the  familiar  malts  of  the  Vaterland. 
Believe  me,  I  wouldn't  put  it  past  them. 

Anyway,  having  safely  reached  JNIaubeuge, 
the  far-seeing  Rheinishman  effected  a  working 
understanding  with  a  native  publican,  which 
was  probably  a  good  thing  for  both,  seeing 
that  one  had  a  stock  of  goods  and  a  ready- 
made  trade  but  no  place  to  set  up  business, 
and  that  the  other  owned  a  shop,  but  had  lost 
his  trade  and  his  stock-in-trade  likewise. 
These  two,  the  little,  affable  German  and  the 
tall,  grave  Frenchman,  stood  now  behind  their 
counter  drawing  off  mugs  of  Pilsener  as  fast 
as  their  four  hands  could  move.  Their  patrons, 
their  most  vocal  and  boisterous  patrons,  were 
a  company  of  musketeers  who  had  marched  in 
[3361 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


from  the  north  that  afternoon.  As  a  rule  the 
new  levies  went  down  into  France  on  troop 
trains,  but  this  company  was  part  of  a  draft 
which  for  some  reason  came  afoot.  Without 
exception  they  were  young  men,  husky  and 
hearty  and  inspired  with  a  beefish  joviality  at 
having  found  a  place  where  they  could  ease  their 
feet,  and  rest  their  legs,  and  slake  their  week-old 
thirst  upon  their  own  soothing  brews.  Being 
German  they  expressed  their  gratefulness  in  song. 
We  had  difficulty  getting  into  the  place,  so 
completely  was  it  filled.  Men  sat  in  the  win- 
dow ledges,  and  in  the  few  chairs  that  were 
available,  and  even  in  the  fireplace,  and  on  the 
ends  of  the  bar,  clunking  their  heels  against 
the  wooden  baseboards.  The  others  stood  in 
such  close  order  they  could  hardly  clear  their 
elbows  to  lift  their  glasses.  The  air  was  choky 
with  a  blended  smell  derived  from  dust  and 
worn  boot  leather  and  spilt  essences  of  hops 
and  healthy,  unwashed,  sweaty  bodies.  On  a 
chair  in  a  corner  stood  a  tall,  tired  and  happy 
youth  who  beat  time  for  the  singing  with  an 
empty  mug  and  between  beats  nourished  him- 
self on  drafts  from  a  filled  mug  which  he  held 
in  his  other  hand.  With  us  was  a  German 
oflicer.  He  was  a  captain  of  reserves  and  a 
person  of  considerable  wealth.  He  shoved  his 
way  to  the  bar  and  laid  down  upon  its  sloppy 
surface  two  gold  coins  and  said  something  to 
a  petty  officer  who  was  directing  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  refreshments. 
[337] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


The  noncom.  hammered  for  silence  and,  when 
he  got  it,  announced  that  the  Herr  Hauptmann 
had  donated  twenty  marks'  worth  of  beer, 
all  present  being  invited  to  cooperate  in  drink- 
ing it  up,  which  they  did,  but  first  gave  three 
cheers  for  the  captain  and  three  more  for  his 
American  friends  and  afterward,  while  the  re- 
plenished mugs  radiated  in  crockery  waves 
from  the  bar  to  the  back  walls,  sang  for  us  a 
song  which,  so  far  as  the  air  was  concerned, 
sounded  amazingly  like  unto  Every  Little  Move- 
ment Has  a  Meaning  All  Its  Own.  Their 
weariness  was  quite  fallen  away  from  them; 
they  were  like  schoolboys  on  a  frolic.  Indeed, 
I  think  a  good  many  of  them  were  schoolboys. 

As  we  came  out  a  private  who  stood  in  the 
doorway  spoke  to  us  in  fair  English.  He  had 
never  been  in  America,  but  he  had  a  brother 
living  in  East  St.  Louis  and  he  wanted  to 
know  if  any  of  us  knew  his  brother.  This  was 
a  common  experience  with  us.  Every  third 
German  soldier  we  met  had  a  brother  or  a 
sister  or  somebody  in  America.  This  soldier 
could  not  have  been  more  than  eighteen  years; 
the  down  on  his  cheeks  was  like  corn  silk. 
He  told  us  he  and  his  comrades  were  very  glad 
to  be  going  forward  where  there  would  be 
fighting.  They  had  had  no  luck  yet.  There 
had  been  no  fighting  where  they  had  been.  I 
remembered  afterward  that  luck  was  the  word 
he  used. 

We  went  back  to  the  main  street  and  for  a 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


distance  the  roar  of  their  volleying  chorus 
followed  us.  Men  and  women  stood  at  the 
doors  of  the  houses  along  the  way.  They  were 
silent  and  idle.  Idleness  and  silence  seemed 
always  to  have  fallen  as  grim  legacies  upon  the 
civilian  populace  of  these  captured  towns;  but 
the  look  upon  their  faces  as  they  listened  to  the 
soldiers'  voices  was  not  hard  to  read.  Their 
town  was  pierced  by  cannonballs  where  it  was 
not  scarified  with  fire;  there  was  sorrow  and 
the  abundant  cause  for  sorrow  in  every  house; 
commerce  was  dead  and  credit  was  killed; 
and  round  the  next  turning  theij"  enemy  sang 
his  drinking  song.  I  judge  that  the  thrifty 
Frenchman  who  went  partner  with  the  German 
stranger  in  the  beer  traffic  lost  popularity  that 
day  among  his  fellow  townsmen. 

We  were  bound  for  the  railway  station, 
which  the  Germans  already  had  rechristened 
Bahnhof.  Word  had  been  brought  to  us  that 
trains  of  wounded  men  and  prisoners  were  due 
in  the  course  of  the  afternoon  from  the  front, 
and  more  especially  from  the  right  w4ng;  and 
in  this  prospect  we  scented  a  story  to  be 
written.  To  reach  the  station  we  crossed  the 
river  Sambre,  over  a  dainaged  bridge,  and 
passed  beneath  the  arched  passageway  of  the 
citadel  which  the  great  Vauban  built  for  the 
still  greater  Louis  XIV,  thinking,  no  doubt, 
when  he  built  it,  that  it  would  always  be  potent 
to  keep  out  any  foe,  however  strong.  Next 
to  its  stupid  massiveness  what  most  impressed 
[3391 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


US  this  day  was  its  utter  uselessness  as  a  pro- 
tection. The  station  stood  just  beyond  the 
walls,  with  a  park  at  one  side  of  it,  but  the 
park  had  become  a  timber  deadfall.  At  the 
approach  of  the  enemy  hundreds  of  splendid 
trees  had  been  felled  to  clear  the  w^ay  for  gun- 
fire from  the  inner  defenses  in  the  event  that 
the  Germans  got  by  the  outer  circle  of  fort- 
resses. After  the  Germans  took  the  forts, 
though,  the  town  surrendered,  so  all  this  de- 
struction had  been  futile.  There  were  acres 
of  ragged  stumps  and,  between  the  stumps, 
jungles  of  overlapping  trunks  and  interlacing 
boughs  from  which  the  dead  and  dying  leaves 
shook  off  in  showers.  One  of  our  party,  who 
knew  something  of  forestry,  estimated  that 
these  trees  were  about  forty  years  old. 

"I  suppose,"  he  added  speculatively,  "that 
when  this  war  ends  these  people  will  replant 
their  trees.  Then  in  another  forty  years  or  so 
another  war  will  come  and  they  will  chop 
them  all  down  again.  On  the  whole  I'm  rather 
glad  I  don't  live  on  this  continent." 

The  trains  which  were  expected  had  not 
begun  to  arrive  yet,  so  with  two  companions 
I  sat  on  a  bench  at  the  back  of  the  station, 
waiting.  Facing  us  was  a  line  of  houses.  One, 
the  corner  house,  was  a  big  black  char.  It  had 
caught  fire  during  the  shelling  and  burned 
quite  down.  Its  neighbors  were  intact,  except 
for  shattered  chimneys  and  smashed  doors 
and  riddled  windows.  The  concussion  of  a  big 
[3401 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


gunfire  had  shivered  every  window  in  this 
quarter  of  town.  There  being  no  sufiicient  stock 
of  glass  with  which  to  replace  the  broken 
panes,  and  no  way  of  bringing  in  fresh  supplies, 
the  owners  of  the  damaged  buildings  had 
patched  the  holes  with  bits  of  planking  filched 
from  more  complete  ruins  near  by.  Of  course 
there  were  other  reasons,  too,  if  one  stopped 
to  sum  them  up:  Few  would  have  the  money 
to  buy  fresh  glass,  even  if  there  was  any  fresh 
glass  to  buy,  and  the  local  glaziers — such  of 
them  as  survived — would  be  serving  the  colors. 
All  France  had  gone  to  war  and  at  this  time 
of  writing  had  not  come  back,  except  in  drib- 
bling streams  of  wounded  and  prisoners. 

These  ragged  boards,  sparingly  nailed  across 
the  window  sockets,  gave  the  houses  the  air 
of  wearing  masks  and  of  squinting  at  us 
through  narrow  eye  slits.  The  railroad  station 
was  windowless,  too,  like  all  the  buildings 
round  about,  but  nobody  had  closed  the  open- 
ings here,  and  it  gaped  emptily  in  fifty  places, 
and  the  raw,  gusty  winds  of  a  North  European 
fall  searched  through  it. 

In  this  immediate  neighborhood  few  of  the 
citizens  were  to  be  seen.  Even  those  houses 
which  still  were  humanly  habitable  appeared 
to  be  untenanted;  only  soldiers  were  about, 
and  not  so  very  many  of  them.  A  hundred 
yards  up  the  tracks,  on  a  siding,  a  squad  of 
men  with  a  derrick  and  crane  were  hoisting 
captured  French  field  guns  upon  flat  cars  to 
[3411 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


be  taken  to  Berlin  and  exhibited  as  spoils  of  con- 
quest for  the  benefit  of  the  stay-at-homes. 
A  row  of  these  cannons,  perhaps  fifty  in  all, 
were  ranked  alongside  awaiting  loading  and 
transportation.  Except  for  the  agonized  whine 
of  the  tackle-blocks  and  the  buzzing  of  the 
flies  the  place  where  we  sat  was  pretty  quiet. 
There  were  a  million  flies,  and  there  seemed 
to  be  a  billion.  You  wouldn't  have  thought, 
unless  you  had  been  there  to  see  for  yourself, 
that  there  were  so  many  flies  in  the  world. 
By  the  time  this  was  printed  the  cold  weather 
had  cured  Europe  of  its  fly  plague,  but  during 
the  first  three  months  I  know  that  the  track 
of  war  was  absolutely  sown  with  these  vermin. 
Even  after  a  night  of  hard  frost  they  would 
be  as  thick  as  ever  at  midday — as  thick  and 
as  clinging  and  as  nasty.  Go  into  any  close, 
ill-aired  place  and  no  matter  what  else  you 
might  smell,  you  smelled  flies  too. 

As  I  sit  and  look  back  on  what  I  myself 
have  seen  of  it,  this  war  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  not  so  much  a  sight  as  a  stench.  Every- 
thing which  makes  for  human  happiness  and 
human  usefulness  it  has  destroyed.  What  it 
has  bred,  along  with  misery  and  pain  and 
fatted  burying  grounds,  is  a  vast  and  loathsome 
stench  and  a  universe  of  flies. 

The  smells  and  the  flies;  they  were  here  in 

this    railroad    station    in    sickening    profusion. 

I  call  it  a  railroad  station,  although  it  had  lost 

its  functions  as  such  weeks  before.     The  only 

[3421 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


trains  which  ran  now  were  run  by  the  Ger- 
mans for  strictly  German  purposes,  and  so  the 
station  had  become  a  victualing  point  for 
troops  going  south  to  the  fighting  and  a  way 
hospital  for  sick  and  wounded  coming  back 
from  the  fighting.  What,  in  better  days  than 
these,  had  been  the  lunch  room  was  a  place 
for  the  redressing  of  hurts.  Its  high  counters, 
which  once  held  sandwiches  and  tarts  and 
wine  bottles,  were  piled  with  snovv^drifts  of 
medicated  cotton  and  rolls  of  lint  and  buckets 
of  antiseptic  washes  and  drug  vials.  The 
ticket  booth  was  an  improvised  pharmacy. 
Spare  medical  supplies  filled  the  room  where 
formerly  fussy  customs  officers  examined  the 
luggage  of  travelers  coming  out  of  Belgium  into 
France.  Just  beyond  the  platform  a  wooden 
booth,  with  no  front  to  it,  had  been  knocked 
together  out  of  rough  planking,  and  relays  of 
cooks,  with  greasy  aprons  over  their  soiled  gray 
uniforms,  made  vast  caldrons  of  stews — always 
stews — and  brewed  so-called  coffee  by  the 
gallon  against  the  coining  of  those  who  would 
need  it.  The  stuff  was  sure  to  be  needed,  all 
of  it  and  more  too.  So  they  cooked  and  cooked 
unceasingly  and  never  stopped  to  wipe  a  pan 
or  clean  a  spoon. 

At  our  backs  was  the  waiting  room  for  first- 
class  passengers,  but  no  passengers  of  any  class 
came  to  it  any  more,  and  so  by  common  con- 
sent it  was  a  sort  of  rest  room  for  the  Red 
Cross  men,  who  mostly  were  Germans,  but 
[3431 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


with  a  few  captured  Frenchmen  among  them, 
still  wearing  their  French  uniforms.  There  were 
three  or  four  French  mihtary  surgeons — 
prisoners,  to  be  sure,  but  going  and  coming 
pretty  much  as  they  pleased.  The  tacit  ar- 
rangement was  that  the  Germans  should  succor 
Germans  and  that  the  Frenchmen  should 
minister  to  their  own  disabled  countrymen 
among  the  prisoners  going  north,  but  in  a 
time  of  stress — and  that  meant  every  time  a 
train  came  in  from  the  south  or  west — both 
nationalities  mingled  together  and  served, 
without  regard  for  the  color  of  the  coat  worn 
by  those  whom  they  served. 

Probably  from  the  day  it  was  put  up  this 
station  had  never  been  really  and  entirely 
clean.  Judged  by  American  standards  Conti- 
nental railway  stations  are  rarely  ever  clean, 
even  when  conditions  are  normal.  Now  that 
conditions  were  anything  but  normal,  this 
Maubeuge  station  was  incredibly  and  in- 
curably filthy.  No  doubt  the  German  nursing 
sisters  who  were  brought  here  tried  at  first, 
with  their  German  love  for  orderliness,  to  keep 
the  interior  reasonably  tidy;  but  they  had  been 
swamped  by  more  important  tasks.  For  two 
weeks  now  the  wounded  had  been  passing 
through  by  the  thousands  and  the  tens  of 
thousands  daily.  So  between  trains  the  women 
dropped  into  chairs  or  down  upon  cots  and 
took  their  rest  in  snatches.  But  their  fingers 
didn't  rest.  Always  their  hands  were  busy 
[3441 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


with  the  making  of  bandages  and  the  fluffing  of 
lint. 

By  bits  I  learned  something  about  three 
of  the  women  who  served  on  the  so-called 
day  shift,  v/hich  meant  that  they  worked  fiom 
early  morning  until  long  after  midnight.  One 
was  a  titled  woman  who  had  volunteered  for 
this  duty.  She  was  beyond  middle  age,  plainly 
in  poor  health  herself  and  everlastingly  on 
the  verge  of  collapse  from  weakness  and  ex- 
haustion. Her  will  kept  her  on  her  feet.  The 
second  was  a  professional  nurse  from  one  of 
the  university  towns — from  Bonn,  I  think. 
She  called  herself  Sister  Bartholomew,  for  the 
German  nurses  who  go  to  war  take  other 
names  than  their  own,  just  as  nuns  do.  She 
was  a  beautiful  woman,  tall  and  strong  and 
round-faced,  with  big,  fine  gray  eyes.  Her 
energy  had  no  limits.  She  ran  rather  than 
walked.  She  had  a  smile  for  every  maimed 
man  who  was  brought  to  her,  but  when  the 
man  had  been  treated,  and  had  limped  away 
or  had  been  carried  away,  I  saw  her  often 
WTinging  her  hands  and  sobbing  over  the  utter 
horror  of  it  all.  Then  another  sufferer  would 
appear  and  she  would  wipe  the  tears  off  her 
cheeks  and  get  to  work  again.  The  third — so 
an  assistant  surgeon  confided  to  us — was  the 
mistress  of  an  officer  at  the  front,  a  prostitute 
of  the  Berlin  sidewalks,  who  enrolled  for  hos- 
pital work  when  her  lover  went  to  the  front. 
She  was  a  taU,  dark,  handsome  girl,  who  looked 
[345] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


to  be  more  Spaniard  than  German,  and  she 
was  graceful  and  lithe  even  in  the  exceedingly 
shapeless  costume  of  blue  print  that  she  wore. 
She  was  less  deft  than  either  of  her  associates 
but  very  willing  and  eager.  As  between  the 
three — the  noblewoman,  the  working  woman 
and  the  woman  of  the  street — the  medical 
officials  in  charge  made  no  distinction  what- 
soever. Why  should  they.f^  In  this  sisterhood 
of  mercy  they  all  three  stood  upon  the  same 
common  ground.  I  never  knew  that  slop  jars 
vrere  noble  things  until  I  saw  women  in  these 
military  lazarets  bearing  them  in  their  arms; 
then  to  me  they  became  as  altar  vessels. 

Lacking  women  to  do  it,  the  head  surgeon 
had  intrusted  the  task  of  clearing  away  the 
dirt  to  certain  men.  A  sorry  job  they  made 
of  it.  For  accumulated  nastiness  that  waiting 
room  was  an  Augean  stable  and  the  two  soldiers 
who  dawdled  about  in  it  with  brooms  lacked 
woefully  in  the  qualities  of  Hercules.  Putting 
a  broom  in  a  man's  hands  is  the  best  argument 
in  favor  of  woman's  suffrage  that  I  know  of, 
anyhow.  A  third  man  who  helped  at  chores  in 
the  transformed  lunch  room  had  gathered  up 
and  piled  together  in  a  heap  upon  the  ground 
near  us  a  bushel  or  so  of  used  bandages — grim 
reminders  left  behind  after  the  last  train  went 
by — and  he  had  touched  a  match  to  the  heap 
in  an  effort  to  get  rid  of  it  by  fire.  By  reason 
of  what  was  upon  them  the  clothes  burned 
slowly,  sending  up  a  smudge  of  acrid  smoke  to 
[3461 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


mingle  with  smells  of  carbolic  acid  and  iodo- 
form, and  the  scent  of  boiling  food,  and  of 
things  infinitely  less  pleasant  than  these. 

Presently  a  train  rolled  in  and  we  crossed 
through  the  building  to  the  trackside  to  watch 
what  would  follow.  Already  we  had  seen  a 
sufficiency  of  such  trains;  we  knew  before  it 
came  what  it  would  be  like:  In  front  the 
dumpy  locomotive,  with  a  soldier  engineer  in 
the  cab ;  then  two  or  three  box  cars  of  prisoners, 
with  the  doors  locked  and  armed  guards 
riding  upon  the  roofs;  then  two  or  three 
shabby,  misused  passenger  coaches,  contain- 
ing injured  officers  and  sometimes  injured 
common  soldiers,  too;  and  then,  stretching 
off  down  the  rails,  a  long  string  of  box  cars, 
each  of  which  would  be  bedded  with  straw 
and  would  contain  for  furniture  a  few  rough 
wooden  benches  ranging  from  side  to  side. 
And  each  car  would  contain  ten  or  fifteen  or 
twenty,  or  even  a  greater  number,  of  sick  and 
crippled  men. 

Those  who  could  sit  were  upon  the  hard 
benches,  elbow  to  elbow,  packed  snugly  in. 
Those  who  were  too  weak  to  sit  sprawled 
upon  the  straw  and  often  had  barely  room 
in  which  to  turn  over,  so  closely  were  they 
bestowed.  It  had  been  days  since  they  had 
started  back  from  the  field  hospitals  where 
they  had  had  their  first-aid  treatment.  They 
had  moved  by  sluggish  stages  with  long  halts 
in  between.  Always  the  wounded  must  wait 
[3471 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


upon  the  sidings  while  the  troop  trains  from 
home  sped  down  the  cleared  main  line  to  the 
smoking  front;  that  was  the  merciless  but 
necessary  rule.  The  man  who  got  himself 
crippled  became  an  obstacle  to  further  progress, 
a  drag  upon  the  wheels  of  the  machine;  whereas 
the  man  who  was  yet  whole  and  fit  was  the  man 
whom  the  generals  wanted.  So  the  fresh  grist 
for  the  mill,  the  raw  material,  if  you  will,  was 
expedited  upon  its  way  to  the  hoppers;  that 
which  already  had  been  ground  up  was  rela- 
tively of  the  smallest  consequence. 

Because  of  this  law,  which  might  not  be 
broken  or  amended,  these  wounded  men 
would,  perforce,  spend  several  days  aboard 
train  before  they  could  expect  to  reach  the 
base  hospitals  upon  German  soil,  Maubeuge 
being  at  considerably  less  than  midwaj^  of 
the  distance  between  starting  point  and  prob- 
able destination.  Altogether  the  trip  might 
last  a  week  or  even  two  weeks — a  trip  that 
ordinarily  would  have  lasted  less  than  twelve 
hours.  Through  it  these  men,  who  were 
messed  and  mangled  in  every  imaginable 
fashion,  would  wallow  in  the  dirty  matted 
straw,  with  nothing  except  that  thin  laj^er 
of  covering  between  them  and  the  car  floors 
that  jolted  and  jerked  beneath  them.  We 
knew  it  and  they  knew  it,  and  there  was 
nothing  to  be  done.  Their  wounds  would 
fester  and  be  hot  with  fever.  Their  clotted 
bandages  would  clot  still  more  and  grow  stiffer 
13481 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


and  harder  with  each  dragging  hour.  Those 
who  lacked  overcoats  and  blankets — and  some 
there  were  who  lacked  both — would  half 
freeze  at  night.  For  food  they  would  have 
slops  dished  up  for  them  at  such  stopping 
places  as  this  present  one,  and  they  would 
slake  their  thirst  on  water  drawn  from  con- 
taminated wayside  wells  and  be  glad  of  the 
chance.  Gangrene  would  come,  and  blood 
poison,  and  all  manner  of  corruption.  Tetanus 
would  assuredly  claim  its  toll.  Indeed,  these 
horrors  were  already  at  work  among  them.  I 
do  not  tell  it  to  sicken  my  reader,  but  because 
I  think  I  should  tell  it  that  he  may  have  a 
fuller  conception  of  what  this  fashionable  in- 
stitution of  war  means — we  could  smell  this 
train  as  we  could  smell  all  the  trains  which 
followed  after  it,  when  it  was  yet  fifty  yards 
away  from  us. 

Be  it  remembered,  furthermore,  that  no  sur- 
geon accompanied  this  afflicted  living  freight- 
age, that  not  even  a  qualified  nurse  traveled 
with  it.  According  to  the  classifying  processes 
of  those  in  authority  on  the  battle  lines  these 
men  were  lightly  wounded  men,  and  it  was 
presumed  that  while  en  route  they  would  be 
'  competent  to  minister  to  themselves  and  to 
one  another.  Under  the  grading  system  em- 
ployed by  the  chief  surgeons  a  man,  who  was 
still  all  in  one  piece  and  who  probably  would 
not  break  apart  in  transit,  was  designated  as 
being  lightly  wounded.  This  statement  is  no 
[349] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


attempt  upon  my  part  to  indulge  in  levity 
concerning  the  most  frightful  situation  I  have 
encountered  in  nearly  twenty  years  of  active 
newspaper  work;  it  is  the  sober,  unexaggerated 
truth. 

And  so  these  lightly  wounded  men — men 
with  their  jaws  shot  away,  men  with  holes  in 
their  breasts  and  their  abdomens,  men  with 
their  spine  tips  splintered,  men  with  their  arms 
and  legs  broken,  men  with  their  hands  and  feet 
shredded  by  shrapnel,  men  with  their  scalps 
ripped  open,  men  with  their  noses  and  their 
ears  and  their  fingers  and  toes  gone,  men 
jarred  to  the  very  marrow  of  their  bones  by 
explosives — these  men,  for  whom  ordinarily 
soft  beds  would  have  been  provided  and  expert 
care  and  special  food,  came  trundling  up  along- 
side that  noisome  station;  and,  through  the 
door  openings  from  where  they  were  housed 
like  dumb  beasts,  they  looked  out  at  us  with 
the  glazed  eyes  of  dumb  suffering  beasts. 

As  the  little  toy  like  European  cars  halted, 
bumping  together  hard,  orderlies  went  run- 
ning down  the  train  bearing  buckets  of  soup, 
and  of  coffee  and  of  drinking  water,  and  loaves 
of  the  heavy,  dark  German  bread.  Behind 
them  went  other  men — bull-necked  strong  men 
picked  for  this  job  because  of  their  strength. 
Their  task  was  to  bring  back  in  their  arms 
or  upon  their  shoulders  such  men  as  were  past 
walking.  There  were  no  stretchers.  There 
was  no  time  for  stretchers.  Behind  this  train 
'  [ 350  ] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


would  be  another  one  just  like  it  and  behind 
that  one,  another,  and  so  on  down  an  eighty- 
mile  stretch  of  dolorous  way.  And  this,  mind 
you,  was  but  one  of  three  lines  carrying  out 
of  France  and  Belgium  into  Germany  victims 
of  the  war  to  be  made  well  again  in  order  that 
they  might  return  and  once  more  be  fed  as 
tidbits  into  the  maw  of  that  war;  it  was  but 
one  of  a  dozen  or  more  such  streams,  thread- 
ing back  from  as  many  battle  zones  to  the 
countries  engaged  in  this  wide  and  ardent 
scheme  of  mutual  extermination. 

Half  a  minute  after  the  train  stopped  a 
procession  was  moving  toward  us,  made  up 
of  men  who  had  wriggled  down  or  who  had 
been  eased  down  out  of  the  cars,  and  who 
were  coming  to  the  converted  buffet  room 
for  help.  Mostly  they  came  afoot,  sometimes 
holding  on  to  one  another  for  mutual  support. 
Perhaps  one  in  five  was  borne  bodily  by  an 
orderly.  He  might  be  hunched  in  the  orderly's 
arms  like  a  weary  child,  or  he  might  be  trav- 
eling upon  the  orderly's  back,  pack-fashion, 
with  his  arms  gripped  about  the  bearer's  neck; 
and  then,  in  such  a  case,  the  pair  of  them, 
with  the  white  hollow  face  of  the  wounded 
man  nodding  above  the  sweated  red  face  of 
the  other,  became  a  monstrosity  with  two 
heads  and  one  pair  of  legs. 

Here,  advancing  toward  us  with  the  gait 
of  a  doddering  grandsire,  would  be  a  boy 
in  his  teens,  bent  double  and  clutching  his 
[351] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


middle  with  both  hands.  Here  would  be  a 
man  whose  hand  had  been  smashed,  and  from 
beyond  the  rude  swathings  of  cotton  his  fingers 
protruded  stiffly  and  were  so  congested  and 
swollen  they  looked  like  fat  red  plantains. 
Here  was  a  man  whose  feet  were  damaged. 
He  had  a  crutch  made  of  a  spade  handle. 
Next  would  be  a  man  with  a  hole  in  his  neck, 
and  the  bandages  had  pulled  away  from  about 
his  throat,  showing  the  raw  inflamed  hole. 
In  this  parade  I  saw  a  French  infantryman  aided 
along  by  a  captured  Zouave  on  one  side  and 
on  the  other  by  a  German  sentry  who  swung 
his  loaded  carbine  in  his  free  hand.  Behind 
them  I  saw  an  awful  nightmare  of  a  man — 
a  man  whose  face  and  bare  cropped  head 
and  hands  and  shoes  were  all  of  a  livid,  poison- 
ous, gi'een  cast.  A  shell  of  some  new  and 
particularly  devilish  variety  had  burst  near 
him  and  the  fumes  which  it  generated  in 
bursting  had  dyed  him  green.  Every  man 
would  have,  tied  about  his  neck  or  to  one  of 
his  buttonholes,  the  German  field-doctor's 
card  telling  of  the  nature  of  his  hurt  and  the 
place  where  he  had  sustained  it;  and  the  uni- 
form of  nearly  every  one  would  be  discolored 
with  dried  blood,  and  where  the  coat  gaped 
open  you  marked  that  the  harsh,  white  cam- 
bric lining  was  made  harsher  still  by  sti£F, 
brownish-red  streakings. 

In  at  the  door  of  the  improvised  hospital 
filed  the  parade,  and  the  wounded  men  dropped 
[3521 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


on  the  floor  or  else  were  lowered  upon  chairs 
and  tables  and  cots — anywhere  that  there 
was  space  for  them  to  huddle  up  or  stretch 
out.  And  then  the  overworked  surgeons, 
French  and  German,  and  the  German  nursing 
sisters  and  certain  of  the  orderlies  would  fall 
to.  There  was  no  time  for  the  finer,  daintier 
proceedings  that  might  have  spared  the  suf- 
ferers some  measure  of  their  agony.  It  was 
cut  away  the  old  bandage,  pull  off  the  filthy 
cotton,  dab  with  antiseptics  what  was  beneath, 
pour  iodine  or  diluted  acid  upon  the  bare  and 
shrinking  tissues,  perhaps  do  that  with  the 
knife  or  probe  which  must  be  done  where  in- 
cipient mortification  had  set  in,  clap  on  fresh 
cotton,  wind  a  strip  of  cloth  over  it,  pin  it  in 
place  and  send  this  man  away  to  be  fed — 
providing  he  could  eat;  then  turn  to  the  next 
poor  wretch.  The  first  man  was  out  of  that 
place  almost  before  the  last  man  was  in;  that 
was  how  fast  the  work  went  forward. 

One  special  horror  was  spared:  The  patients 
made  no  outcry.  They  gritted  their  teeth 
and  writhed  where  they  lay,  but  none  shrieked 
out.  Indeed,  neither  here  nor  at  any  of  the 
other  places  where  I  saw  wounded  men  did 
we  hear  that  chorus  of  moans  and  shrieks 
with  which  fiction  always  has  invested  such 
scenes.  Those  newly  struck  seemed  stunned 
into  silence;  those  who  had  had  time  to  recover 
from  the  first  shock  of  being  struck  appeared 
buoyed  and  sustained  by  a  stoic  quality  which 
[353] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


lifted  them,  mute  and  calm,  above  the  call 
of  tortured  nerves  and  torn  flesh.  Those  who 
were  delirious  might  call  out;  those  who  were 
conscious  locked  their  lips  and  were  steadfast. 
In  all  our  experience  I  came  upon  just  two  men 
in  their  senses  who  gave  way  at  all.  One  was 
a  boy  of  nineteen  or  twenty,  in  a  field  hospital 
near  Rheims,  whose  kneecap  had  been  smashed. 
He  sat  up  on  his  bed,  rocking  his  body  and 
whimpering  fretfully  like  an  infant.  He  had 
been  doing  that  for  days,  a  nurse  told  us, 
but  whether  he  whimpered  because  of  his 
suffering  or  at  the  thought  of  going  through 
life  with  a  stiffened  leg  she  did  not  know.  The 
other  was  here  at  Maubeuge.  I  helped  hold 
his  right  arm  steady  while  a  sm'geon  took 
the  bandages  off  his  hand.  When  the  wrap- 
ping came  away  a  shattered  finger  came  with 
it — it  had  rotted  off,  if  you  care  to  know  that 
detail — -and  at  the  sight  the  victim  uttered 
growling,  rasping,  animal-like  sounds.  Even 
so,  I  think  it  was  the  thing  he  saw  more  than 
the  pain  of  it  that  overcame  him;  the  pain 
he  could  have  borne.  He  had  been  bearing 
it  for  days. 

I  particularly  remember  one  other  man 
who  was  brought  in  off  this  first  train.  He 
was  a  young  giant.  For  certain  the  old  father 
of  Frederick  the  Great  would  have  had  him 
in  his  regiment  of  Grenadier  Guards.  Well, 
for  that  matter,  he  was  a  grenadier  in  the 
employ  of  the  same  family  now.  He  hobbled 
[354] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


in  under  his  own  motive  power  and  leaned 
against  the  wall  until  the  first  flurry  was  over. 
Then,  at  a  nod  from  one  of  the  shirt-sleeved 
surgeons,  he  stretched  himself  upon  a  bare 
wooden  table  which  had  just  been  vacated  and 
indicated  that  he  wanted  relief  for  his  leg — 
which  leg,  I  recall,  was  incased  in  a  rude, 
splintlike  arrangement  of  plaited  straw.  The 
surgeon  took  off  the  straw  and  the  packing 
beneath  it.  The  giant  had  a  hole  right  through 
his  knee,  from  side  to  side,  and  the  flesh  all 
about  it  was  horribly  swollen  and  purplish- 
black.  So  the  surgeon  soused  the  joint,  wound 
and  all,  with  iodine;  the  youth  meanwhile 
staring  blandly  up  at  the  ceiling  with  his 
arms  crossed  on  his  wide  breast.  I  stood 
right  by  him,  looking  into  his  face,  and  he 
didn't  so  much  as  bat  an  eyelid.  But  he  didn't 
offer  to  get  up  when  the  surgeon  was  done 
with  treating  him.  He  turned  laboriously 
over  on  his  face,  pulling  his  shirt  free  from  his 
body  as  he  did  so,  and  then  we  saw  that  he 
had  a  long,  infected  gash  from  a  glancing 
bullet  across  the  small  of  his  back.  He  had 
been  lying  on  one  angry  wound  while  the  other 
was  redressed.  You  marveled,  not  that  he 
had  endured  it  without  blenching,  but  that 
he  had  endured  it  at  all. 

The  train   stayed  with  us  perhaps  half  an 

hour,  and  in  that  half  hour  at  least  a  hundred 

men  must  have  had  treatment  of  sorts.    A  signal 

sounded  and  the  orderlies  lifted  up  the  few 

[3551 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


wasted  specters  who  still  remained  and  toted 
them  out.  Almost  the  last  man  to  be  borne 
away  was  injured  in  both  legs;  an  orderly 
carried  him  in  his  arm.s.  Seeing  the  need  of 
haste  the  orderly  sought  to  heave  his  burden 
aboard  the  nearest  car.  The  men  in  that  car 
protested;  already  their  space  was  overcrowded. 
.So  the  patient  orderly  staggered  down  the 
train  until  he  found  the  crippled  soldier's 
rightful  place  and  thrust  him  into  the  straw 
just  as  the  'wheels  began  to  turn.  As  the 
cars,  gathering  speed,  rolled  by  us  we  could 
see  that  nearly  all  the  travelers  were  feeding 
themselves  from  pannikins  of  the  bull-meat 
stew.  Wrappings  on  their  hands  and  some- 
times about  their  faces  made  them  doubly 
awkward,  and  the  hot  tallowy  mess  spilt  in 
spattering  streams  upon  them  and  upon  the 
straw  under  them. 

They  were  on  their  way.  At  the  end  of 
another  twenty-four  hour  stretch  they  might 
have  traveled  fifty  or  sixty  or  even  seventy 
miles.  The  place  they  left  behind  them  was 
in  worse  case  than  before.  Grease  spattered 
the  earth;  the  floor  of  the  bufiPet  room  was 
ankle  deep,  literally,  in  discarded  bandages 
and  blood-stiffened  cotton;  and  the  nurses 
and  the  doctors  and  the  helpers  dropped  down 
in  the  midst  of  it  all  to  snatch  a  few  precious 
minutes  of  rest  before  the  next  creaking  caravan 
of  misery  arrived.  There  was  no  need  to  tell 
them  of  its  coming;  they  knew.  All  through 
[356] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


that  afternoon  and  night,  and  through  the 
next  day  and  night,  and  through  the  half  of 
the  third  day  that  we  stayed  on  in  Maubeuge, 
the  trains  came  back.  They  came  ten  minutes 
apart,  twenty  minutes  apart,  an  hour  apart, 
but  rarely  more  than  an  hour  would  elapse 
between  trains.  And  this  traffic  in  marred 
and  mutilated  humanity  had  been  going  on 
for  four  weeks  and  would  go  on  for  nobody 
knew  how  many  weeks  more. 

When  the  train  had  gone  out  of  sight  be- 
yond the  first  turn  to  the  eastward  I  spoke 
to  the  head  surgeon  of  the  German  con- 
tingent— a  broad,  bearded,  middle-aged  man 
who  sat  on  a  baggage  truck  while  an  orderly 
poured  a  mixture  of  water  and  antiseptics 
over  his  soiled  hands. 

"A  lot  of  those  poor  devils  will  die.^"  I 
suggested. 

"Less  than  three  per  cent  of  those  who 
get  back  to  the  base  hospitals  w^ill  die,"  he 
said  with  a  snap  of  his  jaw,  as  though  chal- 
lenging me  to  doubt  the  statement.  "That 
is  the  Vv'onder  of  this  war — that  so  many  are 
killed  in  the  fighting  and  that  so  few  die 
who  get  back  out  of  it  alive.  These  modern 
scientific  bullets,  these  civilized  bullets" — he 
laughed  in  self-derision  at  the  use  of  the 
word — "they  are  cruel  and  yet  they  are  mer- 
ciful too.  If  they  do  not  kill  you  outright 
they  have  a  little  way,  somehow,  of  not  killing 
you  at  all." 

[357] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


"But  the  bayonet  wounds  and  the  saber 
wounds?"  I  said.     "How  about  them?" 

"I  have  been  here  since  the  very  first," 
he  said;  "since  the  day  after  our  troops  took 
this  town,  and  God  knows  how  many  thousands 
of  wounded  men  —  Germans,  EngHshmen, 
Frenchmen,  Turcos,  some  Belgians  —  have 
passed  through  my  hands;  but  as  yet  I  have 
to  see  a  man  who  has  been  wounded  by  a  saber 
or  a  lance.  I  saw  one  bayonet  w^ound  yester- 
day or  the  day  before.  The  man  had  fallen 
on  his  own  bayonet  and  driven  it  into  his  side. 
Shrapnel  wounds?  Yes.  Wounds  from  frag- 
ments of  bombs?  Again,  yes.  Bullet  wounds? 
I  can't  tell  you  how  many  of  those  I  have 
seen,  but  surely  many  thousands.  But  no 
bayonet  wounds.  This  is  a  war  of  hot  lead, 
not  of  cold  steel.  I  read  of  these  bayonet 
charges,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  many  such 
stories  are  true." 

I  didn't  believe  it  either. 

The  train  which  followed  after  the  first, 
coming  up  out  of  France,  furnished  for  us 
much  the  same  sights  the  first  one  had  fur- 
nished, and  so,  with  some  slight  variations, 
did  the  third  train  and  the  fourth  and  all 
the  rest  of  them.  The  station  became  a  sty 
where  before  it  had  been  a  kennel;  the  flies 
multiplied;  the  stenches  increased  in  volume 
and  strength,  if  such  were  possible;  the  win- 
dows of  the  littered  waiting  room,  with  their 
cracked  half  panes,  were  like  ribald  eyes 
[358] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


winking  at  the  living  afflictions  which  con- 
tinually trailed  past  them;  the  floors  looked 
as  though  there  had  been  a  snowstorm, 

A  train  came,  whose  occupants  were  nearly 
all  wounded  by  shrapnel.  Wounds  of  the 
head,  the  face  and  the  neck  abounded  among 
these  men— for  the  shells,  exploding  in  the  air 
above  where  they  crouched  in  their  trenches, 
had  bespattered  them  with  iron  pebbles.  Each 
individual  picture  of  suffering  recurred  with 
such  monotonous  and  regular  frequency  that 
after  an  hour  or  so  it  took  something  out  of 
the  common  run — an  especially  vivid  splash  of 
daubed  and  crimson  horror — to  ciuicken  our 
imaginations  and  make  us  fetch  out  our  note 
books.  I  recall  a  young  lieutenant  of  Uhlans 
who  had  been  wounded  in  the  breast  by  frag- 
ments of  a  grenade,  which  likewise  had  smashed 
in  several  of  his  ribs.  He  proudly  fingered 
his  newly  acquired  Iron  Cross  while  the 
surgeon  relaced  his  battered  torso  with  strips 
of  gauze.  Afterward  he  asked  me  for  a  cigar, 
providing  I  had  one  to  spare,  saying  he  had 
not  tasted  tobacco  for  a  week  and  was  perishing 
for  a  smoke.  We  began  to  take  note  then  how 
the  wounded  men  watched  us  as  we  puffed 
at  our  cigars,  and  we  realized  they  were  dumbly 
envying  us  each  mouthful  of  smoke.  So  we 
sent  our  chauffeur  to  the  public  market  with 
orders  to  buy  all  the  cigars  he  could  find  on 
sale  there.  He  presently  returned  with  the 
front  and  rear  seats  of  the  automobile  piled 
[359] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


high  with  bundled  sheaves  of  the  brown  weed 
— you  can  get  an  astonishingly  vast  number 
of  those  domestic  French  cigars  for  the  equiva- 
lent of  thirty  dollars  in  American  money — 
and  we  turned  the  whole  cargo  over  to  the 
head  nurse  on  condition  that,  until  the  supply 
was  exhausted,  she  give  a  cigar  to  every  hurt 
soldier  who  might  crave  one,  regardless  of  his 
nationality.  She  cried  as  she  thanked  us  for 
the  small  charity. 

"We  can  feed  them — yes,"  she  said,  "but 
we  have  nothing  to  give  them  to  smoke,  and 
it  is  very  hard  on  them." 

A  little  later  a  train  arrived  which  brought 
three  carloads  of  French  prisoners  and  one 
carload  of  English.  Among  the  Frenchmen 
were  many  Alpine  Rangers,  so  called — the 
first  men  we  had  seen  of  this  wing  of  the 
service — and  by  reason  of  their  dark  blue 
uniforms  and  their  flat  blue  caps  they  looked 
more  Hke  sailors  than  soldiers.  At  first  we 
took  them  for  sailors.  There  were  thirty-four 
of  the  Englishmen,  being  all  that  were  left 
of  a  company  of  the  \Yest  Yorkshire  Regiment 
of  infantry.  Confinement  for  days  in  a  bare 
box  car,  with  not  even  water  to  wash  their 
faces  and  hands  in,  had  not  altogether  robbed 
them  of  a  certain  trim  alertness  which  seems 
to  belong  to  the  British  fighting  man.  Their 
puttees  were  snugly  reefed  about  their  shanks 
and  their  kliaki  tunics  buttoned  up  to  their 
throats. 

[360] 


THE  RED    GLUTTON 


We  talked  with  them.  They  wanted  to 
know  if  they  had  reached  Germany  yet, 
and  when  we  told  them  that  they  were  not 
out  of  France  and  had  all  of  Belgium  still 
to  traverse,  they  groaned  their  dismay  in 
chorus. 

"We've  'ad  a  very  'ard  time  of  it,  sir," 
said  a  spokesman,  who  wore  sergeant's  stripes 
on  his  sleeves  and  who  told  us  he  came  from 
Sheffield.  "Seventeen  'ours  we  were  in  the 
trench,  under  fire  all  the  time,  with  water  up 
to  our  middles  and  nothing  to  eat.  We  were 
'olding  the  center  and  when  the  Frenchies  fell 
back  they  didn't  give  our  chaps  no  warning, 
and  pretty  soon  the  Dutchmen  they  'ad  us 
flanked  both  sides  and  we  'ad  to  quit.  But 
we  didn't  quit  until  we'd  lost  all  but  one  of 
our  officers  and  a  good  'alf  of  our  men." 

"Where  was  this?"  one  of  us  asked. 

"Don't  know,  sir,"  he  said.  "It's  a  blooming 
funny  war.  You  never  knows  the  name  of  the 
place  where  you're  fighting  at,  unless  you 
'ears  it  by  chance." 

Then  he  added: 

"Could  you  tell  us,  sir,  'ow's  the  war  going? 
Are  we  giving  the  Germans  a  proper  'iding 
all  along  the  line.'^" 

We  inquired  regarding  their  treatment.  They 
didn't  particularly  fancy  the  food — narsty 
slop,  the  sergeant  called  it — although  it  was 
reasonably  plentiful;  and,  being  true  English- 
men, they  sorely  missed  their  tea.  Then,  too, 
[3611 


PATHS   OF    GLORY 


on  the  night  before  their  overcoats  had  been 
taken  from  them  and  no  explanations  vouch- 
safed. 

"We  could  'ave  done  with  them,"  said  the 
speaker  bitterly;  "pretty  cold  it  was  in  this 
'ere  car.  And  what  with  winter  coming  on 
and  everything  I  call  it  a  bit  thick  to  be  taking 
our  overcoats  off  of  us." 

We  went  and  asked  a  German  officer  who  had 
the  convoy  in  charge  the  reason  for  this,  and 
he  said  the  overcoats  of  all  the  uninjured 
men,  soldiers  as  well  as  prisoners,  had  been 
confiscated  to  furnish  coverings  for  such  of 
the  wounded  as  lacked  blankets.  Still,  I 
observed  that  the  guards  for  the  train  had 
their  overcoats.  So  I  vouch  not  for  the 
accuracy  of  his  explanation. 

It  was  getting  late  in  the  afternoon  and 
the  fifth  train  to  pull  in  from  the  south  since 
our  advent  on  the  spot— or  possibly  it  was 
the  sixth — had  just  halted  when,  from  the 
opposite  direction,  a  troop-train,  long  and 
heavy,  panted  into  sight  and  stopped  on  the 
far  track  while  the  men  aboard  it  got  an  early 
supper  of  hot  victuals.  We  crossed  over  to 
have  a  look  at  the  new  arrivals. 

It  was  a  long  train,  drawn  by  one  loco- 
motive and  shoved  by  another,  and  it  included 
in  its  length  a  string  of  flat  cars  upon  which 
were  lashed  many  field  pieces,  and  com- 
mandeered automobiles,  and  even  some  family 
carriages,  not  to  mention  baggage  wagons  and 
[362] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


cook  wagons  and  supply  wagons.  For  a  won- 
der, the  coaches  in  which  the  troops  rode  were 
new,  smart  coaches,  seemingly  just  out  of  the 
builders'  hands.  They  were  mainly  first  and 
second  class  coaches,  varnished  outside  and 
equipped  with  upholstered  compartments  where 
the  troopers  took  their  luxurious  ease.  Fol- 
lowing the  German  fashion,  the  soldiers  had 
decorated  each  car  with  field  flowers  and  sheaves 
of  wheat  and  boughs  of  trees,  and  even  with  long 
paper  streamers  of  red  and  white  and  black. 
Also,  the  artists  and  wags  of  the  detachment 
had  been  busy  with  colored  chalks.  There  was 
displayed  on  one  car  a  lively  crayon  picture 
of  a  very  fierce,  two-tailed  Bavarian  lion 
eating  up  his  enemies — a  nation  at  a  bite. 
Another  car  bore  a  menu: 

Russian  caviar 
Servian  rice  meat  English  roast  beef 

Belgian  ragout  French  pastry 

Upon  this  same  car  was  lettered  a  bit  of 
crude  verse,  which,  as  we  had  come  to  know, 
was  a  favorite  with  the  German  private.  By 
my  poor  translation  it  ran  somewhat  as  fol- 
lows: 

For  the  Slav,  a  kick  we  have. 

And  for  the  Jap  a  slap; 
The  Briton  too — we'll  beat  him  blue^ 

And  knock  the  Frenchman  flat. 
[3631 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Altogether  the  train  had  quite  the  holiday- 
ing air  about  it  and  the  men  who  traveled 
on  it  had  the  same  spirit  too.  They  were 
Bavarians — all  new  troops,  and  nearly  all 
young  fellows.  Their  accouterments  were 
bright  and  their  uniforms  almost  unsoiled, 
and  I  saw  that  each  man  carried  in  his  right 
boot  top  the  long,  ugly-looking  dirk-knife  that 
the  Bavarian  foot-soldier  fancies.  The  Ger- 
mans always  showed  heat  when  they  found 
a  big  service  clasp-knife  hung  about  a  cap- 
tured Englishman's  neck  on  a  lanyard,  calling 
it  a  barbarous  weapon  because  of  the  length 
of  the  blade  and  long  sharp  bradawl  which 
folded  into  a  slot  at  the  back  of  the  handle; 
but  an  equally  grim  bit  of  cutlery  in  a  Ba- 
varian's bootleg  seemed  to  them  an  entirely 
proper  tool  for  a  soldier  to  be  carrying. 

The  troops — there  must  have  been  a  full 
battalion  of  them — piled  off  the  coaches  to 
exercise  their  legs.  They  skylarked  about 
on  the  earth,  and  sang  and  danced,  and  were 
too  full  of  coltish  spirits  to  eat  the  rations 
that  had  been  brought  from  the  kitchen  for 
their  consumption.  Seeing  our  cameras,  a 
lieutenant  who  spoke  English  came  up  to  invite 
us  to  make  a  photograph  of  him  and  his  men, 
with  their  bedecked  car  for  a  background.  He 
had  been  ill,  he  said,  since  the  outbreak  of 
hostilities,  which  explained  why  he  was  just 
now  getting  his  first  taste  of  active  campaigning 
service. 

1364] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


"Wait,"  he  said  vaingloriously,  "just  wait 
until  we  get  at  the  damned  British.  Some 
one  else  may  have  the  Frenchiuen — we  want 
to  get  our  hands  on  the  Englishmen.  Do  you 
know  what  my  men  say.f^  They  say  they  are 
glad  for  once  in  their  lives  to  enjoy  a  fight 
where  the  policemen  won't  interfere  and  spoil 
the  sport.  That's  the  Bavarian  for  you — the 
Prussian  is  best  at  drill,  but  the  Bavarian  is 
the  best  fighter  in  the  whole  world.  Only  let 
us  see  the  enemy — that  is  all  we  ask! 

"I  say,  what  news  have  you  from  the  front.'' 
All  goes  well,  eh?  As  for  me  I  only  hope  there 
Mall  be  some  of  the  enemy  left  for  us  to  kill. 
It  is  a  glorious  thing — this  going  to  war! 
I  think  we  shall  get  there  very  soon,  where  the 
fighting  is.  I  can  hardly  wait  for  it."  And 
with  that  he  hopped  up  on  the  steps  of  the 
nearest  car  and  posed  for  his  picture. 

Having  just  come  from  the  place  whither 
he  was  so  eagerly  repairing  I  might  have  told 
him  a  few  things.  I  might  for  example  have 
told  him  what  the  captain  of  a  German  bat- 
tery in  front  of  La  Fere  had  said,  and  that 
was  this: 

"I  have  been  on  this  one  spot  for  nearly 
three  weeks  now,  serving  my  guns  by  day  and 
by  night.  I  have  lost  nearly  half  of  my  original 
force  of  men  and  two  of  my  lieutenants.  We 
shoot  over  those  tree  tops  yonder  in  accordance 
with  directions  for  range  and  distance  whicb 
come  from  somewhere  else  over  field  tele- 
[3651 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


phone,  but  we  never  see  the  men  at  whom  we 
are  firing.  They  fire  back  without  seeing  us, 
and  sometimes  their  shells  fall  short  or  go 
beyond  us,  and  sometimes  they  fall  among 
us  and  kill  and  wound  a  few  of  us.  Thus  it 
goes  on  day  after  day.  I  have  not  with  my 
own  eyes  seen  a  Frenchman  or  an  Englishman 
unless  he  was  a  prisoner.  It  is  not  so  much 
pleasure — fighting  like  this." 

I  might  have  told  the  young  Bavarian 
lieutenant  of  other  places  where  I  had  been — 
places  where  the  dead  lay  for  days  unburied. 
I  might  have  told  him  there  was  nothing 
particularly  pretty  or  particularly  edifying 
about  the  process  of  being  killed.  Death,  I 
take  it,  is  never  a  very  tidy  proceeding;  but 
in  battle  it  acquires  an  added  unkemptness. 
Men  suddenly  and  sorely  stricken  have  a  way 
of  shrinking  up  inside  their  clothes;  unless  they 
die  on  the  instant  they  have  a  way  of  tearing 
their  coats  open  and  gripping  with  their  hands 
at  their  vitals,  as  though  to  hold  the  life  in; 
they  have  a  way  of  sprawling  their  legs  in 
grotesque  postures;  they  have  a  way  of  putting 
their  arms  up  before  their  faces  as  though  at 
the  very  last  they  would  shut  out  a  dreadful 
vision.  Those  contorted,  twisted  arms  with 
the  elbows  up,  those  spraddled  stark  legs,  and, 
most  of  all,  those  white  dots  of  shirts — those 
I  had  learned  to  associate  in  my  own  mind 
with  the  accomplished  fact  of  mortality  upon 
the  field. 

[366] 


THE    RED    GLUTTON 


I  might  have  told  him  of  sundry  field  hos- 
pitals which  I  had  lately  visited.  I  could  re- 
create in  my  memory,  as  I  shall  be  able  to  re- 
create it  as  long  as  I  live  and  have  my  senses, 
a  certain  room  in  a  certain  schoolhouse  in  a 
French  town  where  seven  men  wriggled  and 
fought  in  the  unspeakable  torments  of  lockjaw; 
and  another  room  filled  to  capacity  with  men 
who  had  been  borne  there  because  there  was 
nothing  humanly  to  be  done  for  them,  and  who 
now  lay  very  quietly,  their  suetty-gray  faces 
laced  with  tiny  red  stripes  of  fever,  and  their 
paling  eyes  staring  up  at  nothing  at  all;  and 
still  another  room  given  over  entirely  to 
stumps  of  men,  who  lacked  each  a  leg  or  an 
arm,  or  a  leg  and  an  arm,  or  both  legs  or 
both  arms;  and  still  a  fourth  room  wherein 
were  men — and  boys  too — all  blinded,  all 
learning  to  grope  about  in  the  everlasting  black 
night  which  would  be  their  portion  through 
all  their  days.  Indeed  for  an  immediate 
illustration  of  the  products  of  the  business 
toward  which  he  was  hastening  I  might  have 
taken  him  by  the  arm  and  led  him  across  two 
sets  of  tracks  and  shown  him  men  in  the  prime 
of  life  who  were  hatcheled  like  flax,  and  mauled 
like  blocks,  and  riddled  like  sieves,  and  macer- 
ated out  of  the  living  image  of  their  Maker. 

But  I  did  none  of  these  things.     He  had  a 

picture    of    something    uplifting    and    splendid 

before  his  eyes.     He  wanted  to  fight,   or  he 

thought  he  did,  which  came  to  the  same  thing. 

[367] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


So  what  I  did  was  to  take  down  his  name  and 
promise  to  send  him  a  completed  copy  of  his 
picture  in  the  care  of  his  regiment  and  brigade; 
and  the  last  I  saw  of  him  he  was  half  out  of  a 
car  window  waving  good-by  to  us  and  wishing 
us  aiif  iviedersehen  as  he  was  borne  away  to 
his  ordained  place. 

As  we  rode  back  through  the  town  of  Mau- 
beuge  in  the  dusk,  the  company  which  had 
sung  0  Strassburg  in  the  Franco-German  beer 
shop  at  the  prow  of  the  corner  where  the  three 
streets  met  were  just  marching  away.  I 
thought  I  caught,  in  the  weaving  gray  line  that 
flowed  along  like  quicksilver,  a  glimpse  of  the 
boy  w^ho  was  so  glad  because  he  was  about 
to  have  some  luck. 

In  two  days  fourteen  thousand  wounded  men 
came  back  through  IMaubeuge,  and  possibly 
ten  times  that  many  new  troops,  belonging  to 
the  first  October  draft  of  a  million,  passed 
down  the  line.  In  that  week  fifty  thousand 
wounded  men  returned  from  the  German  right 
wing  alone. 

He's  a  busy  Red  Glutton.  There  seems  to 
be  no  satisfying  his  greed. 


368 


CHAPTER  XV 
BELGIUM— THE  RAG  DOLL  OF  EUROPE 


I  HAVE  told  you  already,  how  on  the  first 
battlefield  of  any  consequence  that  was 
visited  by  our  party  I  picked  up,  from 
where  it  lay  in  the  track  of  the  Allies' 
retreat,  a  child's  rag  doll.  It  was  a  grotesque 
thing  of  print  cloth,  with  sawdust  insides.  I 
found  it  at  a  place  where  two  roads  met. 
Presumably  some  Belgian  child,  fleeing  with 
her  parents  before  the  German  advance, 
dropped  it  there,  and  later  a  wagon  or  perhaps 
a  cannon  came  along  and  ran  over  it.  The 
heavy  wheel  had  mashed  ^he  head  of  it  flat. 

In  impressions  which  I  wrote  when  the  mem- 
ory of  the  incident  was  vivid  in  my  mind,  I 
said  that,  to  me,  this  shabby  little  rag  doll 
typified  Belgium.  Since  then  I  have  seen 
many  sights.  Some  were  dramatic  and  some 
were  pathetic,  and  nearly  all  were  stirring; 
but  I  still  recall  quite  clearly  the  little  picture 
of  the  forks  of  the  Belgian  road,  with  a  back- 
[369] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


ground  of  trampled  fields  and  sacked  houses, 
and  just  at  my  feet  the  doll,  with  its  head 
crushed  in  and  the  sawdust  spilled  out  in 
the  rut  the  ongoing  army  had  made.  And 
always  now,  when  I  think  of  this,  I  find  myself 
thinking  of  Belgium. 

They  have  called  her  the  cockpit  of  Europe. 
She  is  too.  In  wars  that  were  neither  of  her 
making  nor  her  choosing  she  has  borne  the 
hardest  blows — a  poor  little  buffer  state  thrust 
in  between  great  and  truculent  neighbors.  To 
strike  at  one  another  they  must  strike  Belgium. 
By  the  accident  of  geography  and  the  caprice 
of  boundary  lines  she  has  always  been  the 
anvil  for  their  hammers.  Jemmapes  and 
Waterloo,  to  cite  two  especially  conspicuous 
examples  among  great  Continental  battles, 
were  fought  on  her  soil.  Indeed,  there  is  scarce- 
ly an  inch  of  her  for  the  possession  of  which 
men  of  breeds  not  her  own — Austrians  and 
Spaniards,  Hanoverians  and  Hollanders,  Eng- 
lishmen and  Prussians,  Saxons  and  Frenchmen 
— have  not  contended.  These  others  won  the 
victories  or  lost  them,  kept  the  spoils  or  gave 
them  up;  she  wore  the  scars  of  the  grudges 
when  the  grudges  were  settled.  So  there  is  a 
reason  for  calling  her  the  cockpit  of  the  na- 
tions; but,  as  I  said  just  now,  I  shall  think  of 
her  as  Europe's  rag  doll — a  thing  to  be  clouted 
and  kicked  about;  to  be  crushed  under  the 
hoofs  and  the  heels;  to  be  bled  and  despoiled 
and  ravished. 

[3701 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

Thinking  of  her  so,  I  do  not  mean  by  this 
comparison  to  reflect  in  any  wise  on  the 
courage  of  her  people.  It  will  be  a  long  time 
before  the  rest  of  the  world  forgets  the  resist- 
ance her  soldiers  made  against  overbrimming 
odds,  or  the  fortitude  with  which  the  families 
of  those  soldiers  faced  a  condition  too  la- 
mentable for  description. 

Unsolicited,  so  competent  an  authority  as 
Julius  Caesar  once  gave  the  Belgians  a  testi- 
monial for  their  courage.  If  I  recall  the 
commentaries  aright,  he  said  they  were  the 
most  valorous  of  all  the  tribes  of  Gaul.  Those 
who  come  afterward  to  set  down  the  tale 
and  tally  of  the  Great  War  will  record  that 
through  the  centuries  the  Belgians  retained 
their  ancient  valor. 

First  and  last,  I  had  rather  exceptional  op- 
portunities for  viewing  the  travail  of  Belgium. 
I  was  in  Brussels  before  it  surrendered  and 
after  it  surrendered.  I  was  in  Louvain  when 
the  Germans  entered  it  and  I  was  there  again 
after  the  Germans  had  wrecked  it.  I  trailed 
the  original  army  of  invasion  from  Brussels 
southward  to  the  French  border,  starting  at 
the  tail  of  the  column  and  reaching  the  head 
of  it  before,  with  my  companions,  I  was  ar- 
rested and  returned  by  another  route  across 
Belgium  to  German  soil. 

Within  three  weeks  thereafter  I  started  on 
a    ten-day    tour    which    carried    me    through 
Liege,  Namur,  Huy,  Dinant  and  Chimay,  and 
[3711 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


brought  me  back  by  Mons,  Brussels,  Louvain 
and  Tirlemont,  with  a  side  trip  to  the  trenches 
before  Antwerp — roughly,  a  kite-shaped  jour- 
ney which  comprehended  practically  all  the 
scope  of  active  operations  among  the  contend- 
ing armies  prior  to  the  time  when  the  struggle 
for  western  Flanders  began.  Finally,  just  after 
Antwerp  fell,  I  skirted  the  northern  frontiers 
of  Belgium  and  watched  the  refugees  pouring 
across  the  borders  into  Holland.  I  was  four 
times  in  Liege  and  three  times  in  Brussels, 
and  any  number  of  times  I  crossed  and  recrossed 
my  own  earlier  trails.  I  traveled  afoot;  in  a 
railroad  train,  with  other  prisoners;  in  a  taxi- 
cab,  which  we  lost;  in  a  butcher's  cart,  which 
we  gave  away;  in  an  open  carriage,  which 
deserted  us;  and  in  an  automobile,  which 
vanished. 

I  saw  how  the  populace  behaved  while  their 
little  army  was  yet  intact,  offering  gallant  re- 
sistance to  the  Germans;  I  saw  how  they  be- 
haved when  the  German  wedge  split  that  army 
into  broken  fragments  and  the  Germans  were 
among  them,  holding  dominion  with  the 
bayonet  and  the  torch;  and  finally,  six  weeks 
later,  I  saw  how  they  behaved  when  sub- 
stantially all  their  country,  excluding  a  strip 
of  seaboard,  had  been  reduced  to  the  state 
of  a  conquered  fief  held  and  ruled  by  force  of 
arms. 

By  turns  I  saw  them  determined,  desperate, 
despairing,  half  rebellious,  half  subdued;  re- 
[372] 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

signed  with  the  resignation  of  sheer  helpless- 
ness, which  I  take  it  is  a  different  thing  from 
the  resignation  of  sheer  hopelessness.  It  is 
no  very  pleasant  sight  to  see  a  country  flayed 
and  quartered  like  a  bloody  carcass  in  a  meat 
shop;  but  an  even  less  pleasant  thing  than 
that  is  to  see  a  country's  heart  broken.  And 
Belgium  to-day  is  a  country  with  a  broken 
heart. 

These  lines  were  written  with  intent  to  be 
printed  early  in  January.  By  that  time  Christ- 
mas was  over  and  done  with.  On  the  other  side 
of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  in  lieu  of  the  Christmas 
carols,  the  cannon  had  rung  its  brazen  Christ- 
mas message  across  the  trenches,  making  mock- 
ery of  the  words:  "On  earth  peace,  good  will 
toward  men."  On  our  side  of  the  ocean  the 
fine  spirit  of  charity  and  graciousness  which 
comes  to  most  of  us  at  Christmastime  and  keeps 
Christmas  from  becoming  a  thoroughly  com- 
mercialized institution  had  begun  to  abate 
somewhat  of  its  fervor. 

To  ourselves  we  were  saying,  many  of  us: 
"We  have  done  enough  for  the  poor,  whom 
we  have  with  us  always."  But  not  always 
do  we  have  with  us  a  land  famous  for  its 
fecundity  that  is  now  at  grips  with  famine;  a 
land  that  once  was  light-hearted,  but  where 
now  you  never  hear  anyone  laugh  aloud ;  a  land 
that  is  half  a  waste  and  half  a  captive  prov- 
ince; a  land  that  cannot  find  bread  to  feed  its 
hungry  mouths,  yet  is  called  on  to  pay  a  tribute 
[3731 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


heavy  enough  to  bankrupt  it  even  in  normal 
times;  a  land  whose  best  manhood  is  dead 
on  the  battleground  or  rusting  in  military  pris- 
ons; whose  women  and  children  by  the  count- 
less thousands  are  either  homeless  wanderers 
thrust  forth  on  the  bounty  of  strangers  in 
strange  places,  or  else  are  helpless,  hungry 
paupers  sitting  with  idle  hands  in  their  deso- 
lated homes — and  that  land  is  Belgium. 

Having  been  an  eyewitness  to  the  causes 
that  begot  this  condition  and  to  the  condition 
itself,  I  feel  it  my  duty  to  tell  the  story  as  I 
know  it.  I  am  trying  to  tell  it  dispassionately, 
without  prejudice  for  any  side  and  without 
hysteria.  I  concede  the  same  to  be  a  difficult 
undertaking. 

Some  space  back  I  wrote  that  I  had  been 
able  to  find  in  Belgium  no  direct  proof  of  the 
mutilations,  the  torturings  and  other  barbarities 
which  were  charged  against  the  Germans  by 
the  Belgians.  Though  fully  a  dozen  seasoned 
journalists,  both  English  and  American,  later 
agreed  with  me,  saying  that  their  experiences 
in  this  regard  had  been  the  same  as  mine;  and 
though  I  said  in  the  same  breath  that  I  could 
not  find  in  Germany  any  direct  evidence  of 
the  brutalities  charged  against  the  Belgians 
by  the  Germans,  the  prior  statement  was  ac- 
cepted by  some  persons  as  proof  that  my 
sympathy  for  the  Belgians  had  been  chilled 
through  association  with  the  Germans.  No 
such  thing.  But  what  I  desire  now  is  the  op- 
[3741 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUllOPE 

portunity  to  say  this:  In  the  face  of  the  pres- 
ent pHght  of  this  Httle  country  we  need  not 
look  for  individual  atrocities.  Belgium  herself 
is  the  capsheaf  atrocity  of  the  war.  No  matter 
what  our  nationality,  our  race  or  our  senti- 
ments may  be,  none  of  us  can  get  away  from 
that. 

Going  south  into  France  from  the  German 
border  city  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  our  auto- 
mobile carried  us  down  the  Meuse.  On  the 
eastern  bank,  which  mainly  we  followed  during 
the  first  six  hours  of  riding,  there  were  crsiggy 
cliffs,  covered  with  forests,  which  at  intervals 
were  cleft  by  deep  ravines,  where  small  farms 
clung  to  the  sides  of  the  steep  hills.  On  the 
opposite  shore  cultivated  lands  extended  from 
the  limit  of  one's  vision  down  almost  to  the 
water.  There  they  met  a  continuous  chain 
of  manufacturing  plants,  now  all  idle,  which 
stretched  along  the  river  shore  from  end  to 
end  of  the  valley.  Culm  and  flume  and  stack 
and  kiln  succeeded  one  another  unendingly,  but 
no  smoke  issued  from  any  chimney;  and  we 
noted  that  already  weeds  were  springing  up  in 
the  quarry  yards  and  about  the  mouths  of  the 
coal  pits  and  the  doorways  of  the  empty  fac- 
tories. 

Considering  that  the  Germans  had  to  fight 
their  way  along  the  Meuse,  driving  back  the 
French  and  Belgians  before  they  trusted  their 
columns  to  enter  the  narrow  defiles,  there  was 
in  the  physical  aspect  of  things  no  great  amount 
[3751 


PATHS   OF    GLORY 


of  damage  visible.  Stagnation,  though,  lay 
like  a  blight  on  what  had  been  one  of  the 
busiest  and  most  productive  industrial  districts 
in  all  of  Europe.  Except  that  trains  ran  by 
endlessly,  bearing  wounded  men  north,  and 
fresh  troops  and  fresh  supplies  south,  the  river 
shore  was  empty  and  silent. 

In  twenty  miles  of  running  we  passed  just 
two  groups  of  busy  men.  At  one  place  a  gang 
of  German  soldiers  were  strengthening  the  tem- 
porary supports  of  a  railroad  bridge  which 
had  been  blown  up  by  the  retiring  forces  and 
immediately  repaired  by  the  invaders.  In 
another  place  a  company  of  reserves  were  re- 
charging cases  of  artillery  shells  which  had  been 
sent  back  from  the  front  in  carload  lots.  There 
were  horses  here — a  whole  troop  of  draft 
horses  which  had  been  worn  out  in  that  re- 
lentless, heartbreaking  labor  into  which  war 
sooner  or  later  resolves  itself.  The  drove  had 
been  shipped  back  this  far  to  be  rested  and 
cured  up,  or  to  be  shot  in  the  event  that  they 
were  past  mending. 

I  had  seen  perhaps  a  hundred  thousand 
head  of  horses,  drawing  cannon  and  wagons, 
and  serving  as  mounts  for  officers  in  the  first 
drive  of  the  Germans  toward  Paris,  and  had 
marveled  at  the  uniformly  prime  condition 
of  the  teams.  Presumably  these  sorry  crow- 
baits,  which  drooped  and  limped  about  the 
barren  railroad  yards  at  the  back  of  the  siding 
where  the  shell  loaders  squatted,  had  been 
[3761 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

whole-skinned  and  sound  of  wind  and  joint 
in  early  August. 

Two  months  of  service  had  turned  them  into 
gaunt  wrecks.  Their  ribs  stuck  through  their 
hollow  sides.  Their  hoofs  were  broken;  their 
hocks  were  swelled  enormously;  and,  worst  of 
all,  there  were  great  raw  wounds  on  their 
shoulders  and  backs,  where  the  collars  and 
saddles  had  worn  through  hide  and  flesh  to 
the  bones.  From  that  time  on,  the  numbers 
of  mistreated,  worn-out  horses  we  encountered 
in  transit  back  from  the  front  increased  stead- 
ily.    Finally  we  ceased  to  notice  them  at  all. 

I  should  explain  that  the  description  I  have 
given  of  the  prevalent  idleness  along  the 
Meuse  applied  to  the  towns  and  to  the  scat- 
tered workingmen's  villages  that  flanked  all 
or  nearly  all  the  outlying  and  comparatively 
isolated  factories.  In  the  fields  and  the  truck 
patches  the  farming  folks — women  and  old 
men  usually,  with  here  and  there  children — 
bestirred  themselves  to  get  the  moldered  and 
mildewed  remnants  of  their  summer-ripened 
crops  under  cover  before  the  hard  frost  came. 

Invariably  we  found  this  state  of  affairs  to 
exist  wherever  we  went  in  the  districts  of 
France  and  of  Belgium  that  had  been  fought 
over  and  which  were  now  occupied  by  the 
Germans.  Woodlands  and  cleared  places, 
where  engagements  had  taken  place,  would, 
within  a  month  or  six  weeks  thereafter,  show 
astonishingly  few  traces  of  the  violence  and 
[3771 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


death  that  had  violated  the  peace  of  the 
countryside.  New  grass  would  be  growing 
in  the  wheel  ruts  of  the  guns  and  on  the  sides 
of  the  trenches  in  which  infantry  had  screened 
itself.  As  though  they  took  pattern  by  the 
example  of  Nature,  the  peasants  would  be 
afield,  gathering  what  remained  of  their  har- 
vests— even  plowing  and  harrowing  the  ground 
for  new  sowing.  On  the  very  edge  of  the 
battle  front  we  saw  them  so  engaged,  seemingly 
paying  less  heed  to  the  danger  of  chance  shell- 
fire  than  did  the  soldiers  who  passed  and  repassed 
where  they  toiled. 

In  the  towns  almost  always  the  situation 
was  different.  The  people  who  lived  in  those 
towns  seemed  like  so  many  victims  of  a  uni- 
versal torpor.  They  had  lost  even  their  sense 
of  inborn  curiosity  regarding  the  passing  stran- 
ger. Probably  from  force  of  habit,  the  shop- 
keepers stayed  behind  their  counters;  but  be- 
tween them  and  the  few  customers  who  came 
there  was  little  of  the  vivacious  chatter  one 
has  learned  to  associate  with  dealings  among 
the  dwellers  in  most  Continental  communities. 

We  passed  through  village  after  village  and 
town  after  town,  to  find  in  each  the  same 
picture — ^men  and  women  in  mute  clusters 
about  the  doorways  and  in  the  little  squares, 
who  barely  turned  their  heads  as  the  auto- 
mobile flashed  by.  Once  in  a  while  we  caught 
the  sound  of  a  brisker  tread  on  the  cobbled 
street;  but  when  we  looked,  nine  times  in  ten 
[3781 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

we  saw  that  the  walker  was  a  soldier  of  the 
German  garrison  quartered  there  to  keep  the 
population  quiet  and  to  help  hold  the  line  of 
communication . 

I  think,  though,  this  cankered  apathy  has  its 
merciful  compensations.  x'Vfter  the  first  shock 
and  panic  of  war  there  appears  to  descend  on 
all  who  have  a  share  in  it,  whether  active  or 
passive,  a  kind  of  numbed  indifference  as  to 
danger;  a  kind  of  callousness  as  to  conse- 
quences, which  I  find  it  difficult  to  define  in 
words,  but  which,  nevertheless,  impresses  itself 
on  the  observer's  mind  as  a  definite  and  tangible 
fact.  The  soldier  gets  it,  and  it  enables  him 
to  endure  his  own  discomforts  and  sufferings, 
and  the  discomforts  and  sufferings  of  his  com- 
rades, without  visible  mental  strain.  The 
civic  populace  get  it,  and,  as  soon  as  they  have 
been  readjusted  to  the  altered  conditions 
forced  on  them  by  the  presence  of  war,  they 
become  merely  sluggish,  dulled  spectators  of 
the  great  and  moving  events  going  on  about 
them.  The  nurses  and  the  surgeons  get  it, 
or  else  they  would  go  mad  from  the  horrors 
that  surround  them.  The  wounded  get  it, 
and  cease  from  complaint  and  lamenting. 

It  is  as  though  all  the  nerve  ends  in  every 
human  body  were  burnt  blunt  in  the  first  hot 
gush  of  war.  Even  the  casual  eyewitness  gets 
it.  We  got  it  ourselves;  and  not  until  we  had 
quit  the  zone  of  hostilities  did  we  shake  it  ofl^. 
Indeed,  we  did  not  try.  It  made  for  subsequent 
[3791 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


sanity  to  carry  for  the  time  a  drugged  and 
stupefied  imagination. 

Barring  only  Huy,  where  there  had  been  some 
sharp  street  fighting,  as  attested  by  shelled 
buildings  and  sandbag  barricades  yet  resting 
on  housetops  and  in  window  sills,  we  encoun- 
tered in  the  first  stage  of  our  journey  no  con- 
siderable evidences  of  havoc  until  late  in  the 
afternoon,  when  we  reached  Dinant.  I  do 
not  understand  why  the  contemporary  chroni- 
cles of  events  did  not  give  more  space  to  Dinant 
at  the  time  of  its  destruction,  and  why  they 
have  not  given  it  more  space  subsequently. 

I  presume  the  reason  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 
same  terrible  week  which  included  the  burning 
of  Louvain  included  also  the  burning  of 
Dinant;  and  in  the  world-wide  cry  of  protesta- 
tion and  distress  which  arose  with  the  smoke 
of  the  greater  calamity  the  smaller  voice  of 
grief  for  little  ruined  Dinant  was  almost  lost. 
Yet,  area  considered,  no  place  in  Belgium  that 
I  have  visited — and  this  does  not  exclude 
Louvain — suffered  such  wholesale  demolition 
as  Dinant. 

Before  war  began,  the  town  had  something 
less  than  eight  thousand  inhabitants.  When  I 
got  there  it  had  less  than  four  thousand,  by 
the  best  available  estimates.  Of  those  four 
thousand  more  than  twelve  hundred  were  then 
without  food  from  day  to  day  except  such  as 
the  Germans  gave  them.  There  were  almost 
no  able-bodied  male  adults  left.  Some  had 
[380] 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

fled,  some  were  behind  bars  as  prisoners  of  the 
Germans,  and  a  great  many  were  dead.  Esti- 
mates of  the  number  of  male  inhabitants  who 
had  been  killed  by  the  graycoats  for  offenses 
against  the  inflexible  code  set  up  by  the 
Germans  in  eastern  Belgium  varied.  A  cau- 
tious native  whispered  that  nine  hundred 
of  his  fellow  townsmen  were  "up  there" — by 
that  meaning  the  trenches  on  the  hills  back 
of  the  town.  A  German  officer,  newly  arrived 
on  the  spot  and  apparently  sincere  in  his  ef- 
forts to  alleviate  the  misery  of  the  survivors, 
told  us  that,  judging  by  what  data  he  had 
been  able  to  gather,  between  four  and  six 
hundred  men  and  youths  of  Dinant  had 
fallen  victims  to  the  wholesale  executions 
which  followed  the  subjugation  of  the  place 
and  the  capture  of  such  ununiformed  pris- 
oners as  were  left  by  order  of  German  com- 
manders. 

In  this  instance  subjugation  meant  annihila- 
tion. The  lower  part  of  the  town,  where  the 
well-to-do  classes  lived,  was  almost  unscathed. 
Casual  shell-fire  in  the  two  engagements  with 
the  French  that  preceded  the  taking  of  Dinant 
had  smashed  some  cornices  and  shattered 
some  windows,  but  nothing  worse  befell.  The 
lower  half,  made  up  mainly  of  the  little  plaster- 
and-stone  houses  of  working  people,  was  gone, 
extinguished,  obliterated.  It  lay  in  scorched 
and  crumbled  waste;  and  in  it,  as  we  rode 
through,  I  saw,  excluding  soldiers,  just  two 
[3811 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


living  creatures.  Two  children,  both  little 
girls,  were  playing  at  housekeeping  on  some 
stone  steps  under  a  doorway  where  there  was 
no  door,  using  bits  of  wreckage  for  furniture. 
We  stopped  a  moment  to  watch  them.  They 
had  small  china  dolls. 

The  river,  flowing  placidly  along  between 
the  artificial  boundaries  of  its  stone  quays, 
and  the  strange  formation  of  clifis,  rising  at 
the  back  to  the  height  of  hundreds  of  feet, 
were  as  they  had  been.  Soldiers  paddled  on 
the  v/ater  in  skiffs  and  thousands  of  ravens 
flickered  about  the  pinnacles  of  the  rocks,  but 
between  river  and  cliff  there  was  nothing  but 
ruination — the  graveyard  of  the  homes  of 
three  thousand  people. 

Yes,  it  was  the  graveyard  not  alone  of  their 
homes  but  of  their  prosperity  and  their  hopes 
and  their  ambitions  and  their  aspirations — the 
graveyard  of  everything  human  beings  count 
worth  having.  This  was  worse  than  Herve 
or  Battice  or  Vise,  or  any  of  the  leveled  towns 
we  had  seen.  Taken  on  the  basis  of  compara- 
tive size,  it  was  worse  even  than  Louvain,  as 
we  discovered  later.  It  was  worse  than  any- 
thing I  ever  saw — worse  than  anything  I  ever 
shall  see,  I  think. 

These  hollow  shells  about  us  were  like  the 
picked  cadavers  of  houses.  Ends  of  burnt  and 
broken  rafters  stood  up  like  ribs.  Empty 
window  openings  stared  at  us  like  the  eye 
sockets  in  skulls.  It  was  not  a  town  upon 
[  382 1 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

which  we  looked,  but  the  dead  and  rotting 
bones  of  a  town. 

Just  over  the  ragged  line  that  marked  the 
lowermost  limits  of  the  destructive  fury  of 
the  conquerors,  and  inside  the  section  which 
remained  intact,  we  traversed  a  narrow  street 
called — most  appropriately,  I  thought — the 
Street  of  Paul  the  Penitent,  and  passed  a  little 
house  on  the  shutters  of  which  was  written, 
in  chalked  German  script,  these  words:  "A 
Grossmutter  " — grandmother — "  ninety-six  years 
old  lives  here.  Don't  disturb  her."  Other 
houses  along  here  bore  the  familiar  line,  written 
by  German  soldiers  who  had  been  billeted  in 
them:  "Good  people.     Leave  them  alone!" 

The  people  who  enjoyed  the  protection  of 
these  public  testimonials  were  visible,  a  few 
of  them.  They  were  nearly  all  women  and 
children.  They  stood  in  their  shallow  door- 
ways as  our  automobile  went  by  bearing  four 
Americans,  two  German  officers  and  the  orderly 
of  one  of  the  officers — for  we  had  picked  up 
a  couple  of  chance  passengers  in  Huy — and 
a  German  chauffeur.  As  we  interpreted  their 
looks,  they  had  no  hate  for  the  Germans. 
I  take  it  the  weight  of  their  woe  was  so  heavy 
on  them  that  they  had  no  room  in  their  souls 
for  anything  else. 

Just  beyond  Dinant,  at  Anseremme,  a 
beautiful  little  village  at  the  mouth  of  a  tiny 
river,  where  artists  used  to  come  to  paint  pic- 
tures and  sick  folks  to  breathe  the  tonic  bal- 
[3831 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


sam  of  the  hills,  we  got  rooms  for  the  night 
in  a  smart,  clean  tavern.  Here  was  quartered 
a  captain  of  cavalry,  who  found  time — so  brisk 
was  he  and  so  high-spirited — to  welcome  us  to 
the  best  the  place  afforded,  to  help  set  the 
table  for  our  belated  supper,  and  to  keep  on 
terms  of  jovial  yet  punctilious  amiability  with 
the  woman  proprietor  and  her  good-looking 
daughters;  also,  to  require  his  troopers  to 
pay  the  women,  in  salutes  and  spoken  thanks, 
for  every  small  office  performed. 

The  husband  of  the  older  woman  and  the 
husband  of  one  of  the  daughters  were  then 
serving  the  Belgian  colors,  assuming  that 
they  had  not  been  killed  or  caught;  but  be- 
tween them  and  this  German  captain  a  perfect 
understanding  had  been  arrived  at.  When 
the  head  of  the  house  fixed  the  prices  she  meant 
to  charge  us  for  our  accommodations,  he  spoke 
up  and  suggested  that  the  rate  was  scarcely 
high  enough;  and  also,  since  her  regular  pa- 
trons had  been  driven  away  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  he  advised  us  that  sizable  tips  on 
our  leaving  would  probably  be  appreciated. 

Next  morning  we  rose  from  a  breakfast — 
the  meat  part  of  it  having  been  furnished 
from  the  German  commissary — to  find  twenty 
lancers  exercising  their  horses  in  a  lovely 
little  natural  arena,  walled  by  hills,  just  below 
the  small  eminence  whereon  the  house  stood. 
It  was  like  a  scene  from  a  Wild  West  exhibition 
at  home,  except  that  these  German  horsemen 
[3841 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

lacked  the  dash  of  our  cowpunchers.  Watching 
the  show  from  a  back  garden,  we  stood  waist 
deep  in  flowers,  and  the  captain's  orderly, 
when  he  came  to  tell  us  our  automobile  was 
ready,  had  a  huge  peony  stuck  in  a  buttonhole 
of  his  blouse.  I  caught  a  peep  at  another 
soldier,  who  was  flirting  with  a  personable 
Flemish  scullery  maid  behind  the  protection 
of  the  kitchen  wall.  The  proprietress  and  her 
daughters  stood  at  the  door  to  wave  us  good-by 
and  to  wish  us,  with  apparent  sincerity,  a  safe 
journey  down  into  France,  and  a  safe  return. 

To  drop  from  this  cozy,  peaceful  place  into 
the  town  of  Dinant  again  was  to  drop  from  a 
small  earthly  paradise  into  a  small  earthly 
hell.  Somewhere  near  the  middle  of  the  little 
perdition  our  cavalry  captain  pointed  to  a 
shell  of  a  house. 

"A  fortnight  ago,"  he  told  us,  "we  found  a 
French  soldier  in  that  house — or  under  it, 
rather.  He  had  been  there  four  weeks,  hiding 
in  the  basement.  He  took  some  food  with 
him  or  found  some  there;  at  any  rate,  he 
managed  to  live  four  weeks.  He  was  blind, 
and  nearly  deaf,  too,  when  we  found  out  where 
he  was  and  dug  him  out — but  he  is  still  alive." 

One  of  us  said  we  should  like  to  have  a  look 
at  a  man  who  had  undergone  such  an  entomb- 
ment. 

"No,  you  wouldn't,"  said  the  captain;  "for 
he  is  no  very  pleasant  sight.  He  is  a  slobbering 
idiot." 

[385] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


In  the  Grand  Place,  near  tlie  sliell-riddled 
Church  of  Notre  Dame — built  by  the  Bishops 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  restored  by  the 
Belgian  Government  in  the  nineteenth,  and 
destroyed  by  the  German  guns  in  the  twentieth 
— a  long  queue  of  women  wound  past  the 
doorway  of  a  building  where  German  non- 
commissioned officers  handed  out  to  each  ap- 
plicant a  big  loaf  of  black  soldier  bread. 

"Oh,  yes;  we  feed  the  poor  devils,"  the 
German  commandant,  an  elderly,  scholarly 
looking  man  of  the  rank  of  major,  said  to  us 
when  he  had  come  up  to  be  introduced.  "  When 
our  troops  entered  this  town  the  men  of  the 
lower  classes  took  up  arms  and  fired  at  our 
soldiers;  so  the  soldiers  burned  all  their  houses 
and  shot  all  the  men  who  came  out  of  those 
houses. 

"All  this  occurred  before  I  was  sent  here. 
Had  I  been  the  commander  of  the  troops,  I 
should  have  shot  them  without  mercy.  It  is 
our  law  for  war  times,  and  these  Belgian 
civilians  must  be  taught  that  they  cannot  fire 
on  German  soldiers  and  not  pay  for  it  with 
their  lives  and  their  homes.  With  the  women 
and  children,  however,  the  case  is  different. 
On  my  own  responsibility  I  am  feeding  the 
destitute.  Every  day  I  give  away  to  these 
people  between  twelve  hundred  and  fifteen 
hundred  loaves  of  bread;  and  I  give  to  some 
who  are  particularly  needy  rations  of  tea  and 
sugar  and  coffee  and  rice.  Also,  I  sell  to  the 
[386] 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

butcher  shops  fresh  and  salt  meat  from  our 
military  stores  at  cost,  requiring  only  that  they, 
in  turn,  shall  sell  it  at  no  more  than  a  fair 
profit.  So  long  as  I  am  stationed  here  I  shall 
do  this,  for  I  cannot  let  them  starve  before 
my  eyes.     I  myself  have  children." 

It  was  like  escaping  from  a  pesthouse  to 
cross  the  one  bridge  of  Dinant  that  remained 
standing  on  its  piers,  and  go  winding  down  the 
lovely  valley,  overtaking  and  passing  many 
German  wagon  trains,  the  stout,  middle-aged 
soldier  drivers  of  which  drowsed  on  their 
seats;  passing  also  one  marching  battalion  of 
foot-reserves,  who,  their  ofiicers  concurring, 
broke  from  the  ranks  to  beg  newspapers  and 
cigars  from  us.  On  the  mountain  ash  the 
bright  red  berries  dangled  in  clumps  like  Christ- 
mas bells,  and  some  of  the  leaves  of  the  elm 
still  clung  to  their  boughs;  so  that  the  wide 
yellow  road  was  dappled  like  a  wild-cat's  back 
with  black  splotches  of  shadow.  Only  when 
we  curved  through  some  village  that  had  been 
the  scene  of  a  skirmish  or  a  reprisal  did  the 
roofless  shells  and  the  toppled  walls  of  the 
houses,  standing  gaunt  and  ugly  in  the  sharp 
sunlight,  make  us  realize  that  we  were  still 
in  the  war  tracks. 

As  nearly  as  we  could  tell  from  our  brief 
scrutiny  a  great  change  had  come  over  the 
dwellers  in  southern  Belgium.  In  August 
they  had  been  buoyant  and  confident  of  the 
ultimate  outcome  and  very  proud  of  the  be- 
[3871 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


havior  of  their  little  army.  Even  when  the 
Germans  burst  through  the  frontier  defenses 
and  descended  on  them  in  innumerable  swarms 
they  were,  for  the  most  part,  not  daunted 
by  those  evidences  of  the  invaders'  numerical 
superiority  and  of  their  magnificent  equip- 
ment. The  more  there  were  of  the  Germans 
the  fewer  of  them  there  would  be  to  come  back 
when  the  Allies,  over  the  French  border,  fell 
on  them.  This  we  conceived  to  be  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  villagers  and  the  peasants; 
but  now  they  were  different.  The  difference 
showed  in  all  their  outward  aspects — in  their 
gaits;  in  their  drooped  shoulders  and  half- 
averted  faces;  and,  most  of  all,  in  their  eyes. 
They  had  felt  the  weight  of  the  armed  hand, 
and  they  must  have  heard  the  boast,  filtering 
down  from  the  officers  to  the  men,  and  from 
the  men  to  the  native  populace,  that,  having 
taken  their  country,  the  Germans  meant  to 
keep  it;  that  Belgium,  ceasing  to  be  Belgium, 
would  henceforth  be  set  down  on  the  map 
as  a  part  of  Greater  Prussia. 

Seeing  them  now,  I  began  to  understand 
how  an  enforced  docility  may  reduce  a  whole 
people  to  the  level  of  dazed,  unresisting  autom- 
atons. Yet  a  national  spirit  is  harder  to  kill 
than  a  national  boundary — so  the  students 
of  these  things  say.  A  little  flash  of  flaming 
hate  from  the  dead  ashes  of  things;  a  quick, 
darting  glance  of  defiance;  a  hissed  word  from 
a  seemingly  subdued  man  or  woman;  a  shrill, 
[3881 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

hostile  wlioop  from  a  ragged  youngster  behind 
a  hedge — things  such  as  these  showed  us  that 
the  courage  of  the  Belgians  was  not  dead. 
It  had  been  crushed  to  the  ground,  but  it 
had  not  been  torn  up  by  the  roots.  The  roots 
went  down  too  far.  The  under  dog  had 
secret  dreams  of  the  day  to  come,  when  he 
should  not  be  underneath,  but  on  top. 

Even  had  there  been  no  abandoned  custom- 
houses to  convince  us  of  it,  we  should  have 
known  when  we  crossed  from  southern  Bel- 
gium into  northern  France;  for  in  France 
the  proportion  of  houses  that  had  suffered 
in  punitive  attacks  was,  compared  with  Bel- 
gium, as  one  to  ten.  Understand,  I  am 
speaking  of  houses  that  had  been  deliberately 
burned  in  punishment,  and  not  of  houses  that 
stood  in  the  way  of  the  cannon  and  the  rapid- 
fire  guns,  and  so  underwent  partial  or  complete 
destruction  as  the  result  of  an  accidental  yet 
inevitable  and  unavoidable  process.  Of  these 
last  France,  to  the  square  mile,  could  offer  as 
lamentably  large  a  showing  as  Belgium;  but 
buildings  that  presented  indubitable  signs  of 
having  been  fired  with  torches  rather  than 
with  shells  were  few. 

Explaining  this  and  applauding  it,  Germans 
of  high  rank  said  it  presented  direct  and  con- 
firmatory proof  of  their  claim  that  sheer  wanton 
reprisals  were  practically  unknown  in  their 
system  of  warfare.  Perhaps  I  can  best  set 
forth  the  German  attitude  in  this  regard  by 
[380] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


quoting   a   general   whom   we   interviewed   on 
the  subject: 

"\\'e  do  not  destroy  for  the  pleasure  it  gives 
us.  We  destroy  only  when  it  is  necessary. 
The  French  rural  populace  are  more  rational, 
more  tractable  and  much  less  turbulent  than 
the  Belgians.  To  a  much  greater  degree  than 
the  Belgians  they  have  refrained  from  acts 
against  our  men  that  would  call  for  severe 
retaliatory  measures  on  our  part.  Consequently 
we  have  spared  the  houses  and  respected  the 
property  of  the  French  noncombatants." 

Personally  I  had  a  theory  of  my  own.  So 
far  as  our  observations  went,  the  people  living 
immediately  on  both  sides  of  the  line  were 
an  interrelated  people,  using  the  same  speech 
and  being  much  alike  in  temperament,  man- 
ners and  mode  of  conduct.  I  reached  the 
private  conclusion  that,  because  of  the  chorus 
of  protest  that  arose  from  all  the  neutral 
countries,  and  particularly  from  the  United 
States,  against  the  severities  visited  on  Belgium 
in  August  and  September,  the  word  went  forth 
to  the  German  forces  in  the  field  that  the 
scheme  of  punishment  for  offenders  who  vio- 
lated the  field  code  should  be  somewhat  softened 
and  relaxed.  However,  that  is  merely  a  per- 
sonal theory.  I  may  be  absolutely  wrong 
about  it.  The  German  general  who  interpreted 
the  meaning  of  the  situation  may  have  been 
absolutely  right  about  it.  Certainly  the  phys- 
ical testimony  was  on  his  side. 
[390] 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

Also,  it  seemed  to  me,  the  psychology"  of  the 
people  —  particularly  of  the  womenfolk  —  in 
lorthern  France  was  not  that  of  their  neigh- 
oors  over  the  frontier.  In  a  trade  way  the 
small  shopkeepers  here  faced  ruin;  the  Bel- 
gian^ already  had  been  ruined.  The  French- 
women, whose  sons  and  brothers  and  hus- 
bands and  fathers  were  at  the  front,  walked 
in  the  shadow  of  a  great  fear,  as  you  might 
tell  by  a  look  into  the  face  of  any  one  of  them. 
They  were  as  peppercorns  between  the  upper 
millstone  and  the  nether,  and  the  sound  of  the 
crunching  was  always  in  their  ears,  even  though 
their  turn  to  be  ground  up  had  not  yet  come. 

For  the  Belgian  women,  however,  the  worst 
that  might  befall  had  already  happened  to 
them;  their  souls  could  be  wrung  no  more; 
they  had  no  terror  of  the  future,  since  the  past 
had  been  so  terrible  and  the  present  was  a 
living  desolation  of  all  they  counted  worth 
while.  You  might  say  the  Frenchwomen 
dreaded  what  the  Belgians  endured.  The  re- 
filled cup  was  at  the  lips  of  France;  Belgium 
had  drained  it  dry. 

Yet  in  both  countries  the  women  generally 
manifested  the  same  steadfast  and  silent  pa- 
tience. They  said  little;  but  their  eyes  asked 
questions.  In  the  French  towns  we  saw  how 
bravely  they  strove  to  carry  on  their  common 
affairs  of  life,  which  were  so  sadly  shaken  and 
distorted  out  of  all  normality  by  the  earthquake 
of  war. 

[3911 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


For  currency  they  had  small  French  coins 
and  strange  German  coins,  and  in  some  places 
futile-looking,  little  green-and-white  slips,  is- 
sued by  the  municipality  in  denominations 
of  one  franc  and  two  francs  and  five  francs, 
and  redeemable  in  hard  specie  "three  months 
after  the  declaration  of  peace."  For  wares 
to  sell  they  had  what  remained  of  their  de- 
pleted stocks;  and  for  customers,  their  friends 
and  neighbors,  who  looked  forward  to  com- 
mercial ruin,  which  each  day  brought  nearer 
to  them  all.  Outwardly  they  were  placid 
enough,  but  it  was  not  the  placidity  of  content. 
It  bespoke  rather  a  dumb,  disciplined  accept- 
ance by  those  who  have  had  fatalism  literally 
thrust  on  them  as  a  doctrine  to  be  practiced. 

Looking  back  on  it  I  can  recall  just  one 
woman  I  saw  in  France  who  maintained  an 
unquenchable  blitheness  of  spirit.  She  was 
the  little  woman  who  managed  the  small 
cafe  in  Maubeuge  where  we  ate  our  meals. 
Perhaps  her  frugal  French  mind  rejoiced  that 
business  remained  so  good,  for  many  officers 
dined  at  her  table  and,  by  Continental  stand- 
ards, paid  her  v/ell  and  abundantly  for  what  she 
fed  them;  but  I  think  a  better  reason  lay  in  the 
fact  that  she  had  within  her  an  innate  buoyancy 
which  nothing — not  even  war — could  daunt. 

She  was  one  of  those  women  who  remain 
trig  and  chic  though  they  be  slovens  by  in- 
stinct. Her  blouse  was  never  clean,  but  she 
wore  it  with  an  air.  Her  skirt  testified  that 
[3921 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

skillets  spit  grease;  but  in  it  she  somehow 
looked  as  trim  as  a  trout  fly.  Even  the  hole 
in  her  stocking  gave  her  piquancy;  and  she 
had  wonderful  black  hair,  which  probably 
had  not  been  combed  properly  for  a  month, 
and  big,  crackling  black  eyes.  They  told  us 
that  one  day,  a  week  or  two  before  we  came, 
she  had  been  particularly  cheerful — so  cheerful 
that  one  of  her  patrons  was  moved  to  inquire 
the  ''ause  of  it. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "I  am  quite  content  with 
life  to-day.  I  have  word  that  my  husband 
is  a  prisoner.  Now  he  is  out  of  danger  and 
you  Germans  will  have  to  feed  him — and  he 
is  a  great  eater!  If  you  starve  him  then  I 
shall  starve  you." 

At  breakfast  Captain  Mannesmann,  who 
was  with  us,  asked  her  in  his  best  French  for 
more  butter.  She  paused  in  her  quick,  bird- 
like movements — for  she  was  waitress,  cook, 
cashier,  manager  and  owner,  all  rolled  into  one 
— and  cocking  a  saucy,  unkempt  head  at  him 
asked  that  the  question  be  repeated.  This 
time,  in  his  efforts  to  be  understood,  he  stretched 
his  words  out  so  that  unwittingly  his  voice 
took  on  rather  a  v/hining  tone. 

"Well,  don't  cry  about  it!"  she  snapped. 
"I'll  see  what  I  can  do." 

Returning  from  the  battle  front  our  itin- 
erary included  a  long  stretch  of  the  great 
road  that  runs  between  Paris  and  Brussels, 
a  road  much  favored  formerly  by  auto  tourists, 
[393] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


but  now  used  almost  altogether  for  military- 
purposes.  Considering  that  we  traversed  a 
corner  of  the  stage  of  one  of  the  greatest 
battles  thus  far  waged — Mons — and  that  this 
battle  had  taken  place  but  a  few  weeks  betore, 
there  were  remarkably  fevv'  evidences  remaining 
of  it. 

With  added  force  we  remarked  a  condition 
that  had  given  us  material  for  wonderment 
in  our  earlier  journeyings.  Though  a  retreat- 
ing army  and  an  advancing  army,  both  enor- 
mous in  size,  had  lately  poured  through  the 
country,  the  houses,  the  farms  and  the  towns 
were  almost  undamaged. 

Certain  contrasts  which  took  on  a  height- 
ened emphasis  by  reason  of  their  brutal  ab- 
ruptness, abounded  all  over  Belgium.  You 
passed  at  a  step,  as  it  were,  from  a  district 
of  complete  and  irreparable  destruction  to 
one  wherein  all  things  were  orderly  and  or- 
dered, and  much  as  they  should  be  in  peaceful 
times.  Were  it  not  for  the  stagnated  towns 
and  the  depression  that  berode  the  people, 
one  would  hardly  know  these  areas  had  lately 
been  overrun  by  hostile  soldiers  and  now 
groaned  under  enormous  tithes.  In  isolated 
instances  the  depression  had  begun  to  lift. 
Certain  breeds  of  the  polyglot  Flemish  race 
have,  it  appears,  an  almost  unkillable  resilience 
of  temper;  but  in  a  town  a  mile  away  all  those 
whom  we  met  would  be  like  dead  people  who 
walked. 

[394] 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

Also,  there  were  many  graves.  If  we  passed 
a  long  ridged  mound  of  clay  in  a  field,  un- 
marked except  by  the  piled-up  clods,  we 
knew  that  at  this  spot  many  had  fought  and 
many  had  fallen;  but  if,  as  occurred  con- 
stantly, one  separate  mound  or  a  little  row  of 
separate  mounds  was  at  the  roadside,  that 
probably  meant  a  small  skirmish.  Such  a 
grave  almost  always  was  marked  by  a  little 
wooden  cross,  with  a  name  penciled  on  it; 
and  often  the  comrades  of  the  dead  man  had 
hung  his  cap  on  the  upright  of  the  cross.  If 
it  were  a  French  cap  or  a  Belgian  the  weather 
would  have  worn  it  to  a  faded  blue-and-red 
wisp  of  worsted.  The  German  helmets  stood 
the  exposure  better.  They  retained  their 
shape. 

On  a  cross  I  saw  one  helmet  with  a  bullet 
hole  right  through  the  center  of  it  in  front. 
Sometimes  there  would  be  flowers  on  the 
mound,  faded  garlands  of  field  poppies  and 
wreaths  of  withered  wild  vines;  and  by  the 
presence  of  these  we  could  tell  that  the  dead 
man's  mates  had  time  and  opportunity  to 
accord  him  greater  honor  than  usually  is  be- 
stowed on  a  soldier  killed  in  an  advance  or 
during  a  retreat. 

Mons  was  reached  soon,  looking  much  as  I 
imagine  Mons  must  always  have  looked;  and 
then,  after  a  few  stretching  and  weary  leagues, 
Brussels — to  my  mind  the  prettiest  and  smart- 
est of  the  capital  cities  of  Europe,  not  excluding 
[395] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Paris.  I  first  saw  Brussels  when  it  was  as  gay 
as  carnival — that  Vv'as  in  mid-August;  and, 
though  Liege  had  fallen  and  Namur  was  falling, 
and  the  German  legions  were  eating  up  the 
miles  as  they  hurried  forward  through  the  dust 
and  smoke  of  their  own  making,  Brussels  still 
floated  her  flags,  built  her  toy  barricades,  and 
wore  a  gay  face  to  mask  the  panic  clutching 
at  her  nerves. 

Getting  back  four  days  later  I  found  her 
beginning  to  rally  from  the  shock  of  the  in- 
vasion. Her  people,  relieved  to  find  that  the 
enemy  did  not  mean  to  mistreat  noncombatants 
who  obeyed  his  code  of  laws,  were  going  about 
their  affairs  in  such  odd  hours  as  they  could 
spare  from  watching  the  unending  gray  freshet 
that  roared  and  pounded  through  their  streets. 
The  flags  were  down  and  the  counterfeit  light- 
heartedness  vras  gone;  but  essentially  she  was 
the  same  Brussels. 

Coming  now,  however,  six  weeks  later,  I 
found  a  city  that  had  been  transformed  out 
of  her  own  customary  image  by  captivity  and 
hunger  and  hard-curbed  resentment.  The 
pulse  of  her  life  seemed  hardly  to  beat  at  all. 
She  lay  in  a  coma,  flashing  up  feverishly  some- 
times at  false  rumors  of  German  repulses  to 
the  southward. 

Only  the  day  before  we  arrived  a  wild  story 

got  abroad  among  the  starvelings  in  the  poorer 

quarters  that  the  Russians  had  taken  Berlin 

and  had  swept  across  Prussia  and  were  now 

[3961 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

pushing  forward,  with  an  irresistible  army,  to 
reheve  Brussels.  So  thousands  of  the  deluded 
populace  went  to  a  bridge  on  the  eastern  out- 
skirts of  the  town  to  catch  the  first  glimpse 
of  the  victorious  oncoming  Russians;  and 
there  they  stayed  until  nightfall,  watching 
and  hoping  and — what  was  more  pitiable — 
believing. 

From  what  I  saw  of  him  I  judged  that  the 
military  governor  of  Brussels,  Major  Bayer, 
was  not  only  a  diplomat  but  a  kindly  and  an 
engaging  gentleman.  Certainly  he  was  wrest- 
ling most  manfully,  and  I  thought  tactfully, 
with  a  difficult  and  a  dangerous  situation. 
For  one  thing,  he  was  keeping  his  soldiers  out 
of  sight  as  much  as  possible  without  relaxing 
his  grip  on  the  community.  He  did  this,  he 
said,  to  reduce  the  chances  of  friction  between 
his  men  and  the  people;  for  friction  might  mean 
a  spark  and  a  spark  might  mean  a  conflagra- 
tion, and  that  would  mean  another  and  greater 
Lou  vain.  We  could  easily  understand  that 
small  things  might  readily  grow  into  great  and 
serious  troubles.  Even  the  most  docile-minded 
man  would  be  apt  to  resent  in  the  wearer  of  a 
hated  uniform  what  he  might  excuse  as  over- 
officiousness  or  love  of  petty  authority  were 
the  offender  a  policeman  of  his  own  nationality. 
Brooding  over  their  own  misfortunes  had  worn 
the  nerves  of  these  captives  to  the  very  quick. 

In  any  event,  be  the  outcome  of  this  war 
what  it  may,  I  do  not  believe  the  Belgians 
[3971 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


can  ever  be  molded,  either  by  kindness  or  by 
sternness,  into  a  tractable  vassal  race.  German 
civilization  I  concede  to  be  an  excellent  thiug 
— for  a  German;  but  it  seems  to  press  on 
an  alien  neck  as  a  galling  yoke.  Belgium 
under  Berlin  rule  would  be,  I  am  sure,  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  ail  over  again  on  a  larger  scale, 
and  an  unhappier  one.  She  vv^ouid  never,  in 
my  humble  opinion,  be  a  star  in  the  Prussian 
constellation,  but  alvrays  a  raw  sore  in  the 
Prussian  side. 

In  Major  Bayer's  office  I  saw  the  m.ajor 
stamp  an  order  that  turned  over  to  the  acting 
burgomaster  ten  thousand  bags  of  flour  for 
distribution  among  the  more  needy  citizens. 
We  were  encouraged  to  believe  that  this  was 
by  v/ay  of  a  free  gift  from  the  German  Govern- 
ment. It  may  have  been  made  without  pa; 
ment  or  promise  of  payment.  In  regard  tu 
that  I  cannot  say  positively;  but  this  was 
the  inference  we  drew  from  the  statements  of 
the  German  ofTicers  who  took  part  in  the  pro- 
ceeding. As  for  the  acting  burgomaster,  he 
stood  through  the  scene  silent  and  inscrutable, 
saying  nothing  at  all.  Possibly  he  did  not 
understand;  the  conversation — or  that  part 
of  it  which  concerned  us — was  carried  on  ex- 
clusively in  English.  His  face,  as  he  bowed 
to  accept  the  certified  warrant  for  the  flour, 
gave  us  no  hint  of  his  mental  processes. 

Major  Bayer  claimed  a  professional  kinship 
with  those  of  us  who  were  newspaper  men, 
[398] 


TliE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

as  he  was  the  head  of  the  Boy  Scout  movement 
in  Germany  and  edited  the  official  organ  of 
the  Boy  Scouts.  He  had  a  squad  of  his  scouts 
on  messenger  duty  at  his  headquarters — 
smart,  alert-looking  youngsters.  They  seemed 
to  me  to  be  much  more  competent  in  their 
department  than  were  the  important-appearing 
German  Secret  Service  agents  who  infested 
the  building.  The  Germans  may  make  first- 
rate  spies — assuredly  their  system  of  espionage 
was  well  organized  before  the  war  broke  out — 
but  I  do  not  think  they  are  conspicuous  suc- 
cesses as  detectives:  their  methods  are  so 
delightfully  translucent. 

Major  Bayer  had  been  one  of  the  foremost 
German  officers  to  set  foot  on  Belgian  soil 
after  the  severance  of  friendly  relations  be- 
tween the  two  countries.  "I  believe,"  he  said, 
"that  I  heard  the  first  shot  fired  in  this  war. 
It  came  from  a  clump  of  trees  within  half  an 
hour  after  our  advance  guard  crossed  the 
boundary  south  of  Aachen,  and  it  wounded 
the  leg  of  a  captain  who  commanded  a  com- 
pany of  scouts  at  the  head  of  the  column. 
Our  skirmishers  surrounded  the  woods  and 
beat  the  thickets,  and  presently  they  brought 
forth  the  man  who  had  fired  the  shot.  He 
was  sixty  years  old,  and  he  Yvas  a  civilian. 
Under  the  laws  of  v/ar  we  shot  him  on  the  spot. 
So  you  see  probably  the  first  shot  fired  in  this 
war  was  fired  at  us  by  a  franc-tireur.  By  his 
act  he  had  forfeited  his  life,  but  personally  I 
[399] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


felt  sorry  for  him;  for  I  believe,  like  many  of 
his  fellow  countrymen  who  afterward  com- 
mitted such  offenses,  he  was  ignorant  of  the 
military  indefensibility  of  his  attack  on  us  and 
did  not  realize  what  the  consequences  would  be. 

"I  am  sure,  though,  that  the  severity  with 
which  we  punished  these  offenses  at  the  out- 
set was  really  merciful,  for  only  by  killing  the 
civilians  who  fired  on  us,  and  by  burning  their 
houses,  could  we  bring  home  to  thousands  of 
others  the  lesson  that  if  they  wished  to  fight 
us  they  m-ust  enlist  in  their  own  army  and 
come  against  us  in  uniforms,  as  soldiers." 

Within  the  same  hour  we  were  introduced 
to  Privy  Councilor  Otto  von  Falke,  an  Aus- 
trian by  birth,  but  now,  after  long  service 
in  Cologne  and  Berlin,  promoted  to  be  Director 
of  Industrial  Arts  for  Prussia.  He  had  been 
sent,  he  explained,  by  order  of  his  Kaiser,  to 
superintend  the  removal  of  historic  works 
of  art  from  endangered  churches  and  other 
buildings,  and  turn  thcin  over  to  the  curator 
of  the  Royal  Belgian  Gallery,  at  Brussels,  for 
storage  in  the  vaults  of  the  museum  until  such 
time  as  peace  had  been  restored  and  they 
might  be  returned  "wath  safety  to  their  original 
positions. 

"So  you  see,  gentlemen,"  said  Professor  von 
Falke,  "the  Germans  are  not  despoiling  Bel- 
gium of  its  wealth  of  pictures  and  statues. 
We  are  taking  pains  to  preserve  and  perpetuate 
them.  They  belong  to  Belgium — not  to  us; 
[4001 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 


and  we  have  no  desire  to  take  them  away. 
Certainly  we  are  not  vandals  who  would 
wantonly  destroy  the  splendid  things  of  art, 
as  our  enemies  have  claimed." 

He  was  plainly  a  sincere  man  and  he  was 
much  in  love  with  his  work;  that,  too,  was 
easy  to  see.  Afterward,  though,  the  thought 
came  to  us  that,  if  Belgium  was  to  become  a 
German  state  by  right  of  seizure  and  con- 
quest, he  was  saving  these  masterpieces  of 
Vandyke  and  Rubens,  not  for  Belgium,  but 
for  the  greater  glory  of  the  Greater  Empire. 

However,  that  was  beside  the  mark.  What 
at  the  moment  seemed  to  us  of  more  conse- 
quence even  than  rescuing  holy  pictures  was 
that  all  about  us  were  sundry  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  men,  women  and  children  who 
did  not  need  pictures,  but  food.  You  had 
only  to  look  at  them  in  the  streets  to  know 
that  their  bellies  felt  the  grind  of  hunger. 
Famine  knocked  at  half  the  doors  in  that  city 
of  Brussels,  and  we  sat  in  the  glittering  cafe 
of  the  Palace  Hotel  and  talked  of  pictures! 

We  called  on  Minister  Brand  Whitlock, 
whom  we  had  not  seen — McCutcheon  and  I — 
since  the  Sunday  afternoon  a  month  and  a 
half  before  when  we  two  left  his  official  resi- 
dence in  a  hired  livery  rig  for  a  ride  to  Water- 
loo, which  ride  extended  over  a  thousand  miles, 
one  way  and  another,  and  carried  us  into  three 
of  the  warring  countries.  Mention  of  this  call 
gives  me  opportunity  to  say  in  parenthesis,  so 
[4011 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 

to  speak,  that  if  ever  a  man  in  acutely  critical 
circumstances  kept  his  head,  and  did  a  big 
job  in  a  big  way,  and  reflected  credit  at  a 
thousand  angles  on  himself  and  the  country 
that  had  the  honor  to  be  served  by  him,  that 
man  was  Brand  Whitlock.  To  him,  a  citizen 
of  another  nation,  the  people  of  forlorn  Brussels 
probably  owe  more  than  to  any  man  of  their 
own  race. 

Grass  was  sprouting  from  between  the 
cobbles  of  the  streets  in  the  populous  resi- 
dential districts  through  which  we  passed  on 
the  way  from  the  American  Ministry  to  our 
next  stopping  place.  Viewed  at  a  short  distance 
each  vista  of  empty  street  had  a  wavy  green 
beard  on  its  face;  and  by  this  one  might  judge 
to  what  a  low  ebb  the  commerce  and  the 
pleasure  of  the  city  had  fallen  since  its  occu- 
pation. There  was  one  small  square  where 
goats  and  geese  might  have  been  pastured.  It 
looked  as  though  weeks  might  have  passed 
since  wagon  Vv^heels  had  rolled  over  those 
stones;  and  the  town  folks  whose  houses 
fronted  on  the  little  square  lounged  in  their 
doorways,  with  idle  hands  thrust  into  their 
pockets,  regarding  us  with  lackluster,  indif- 
ferent eyes.  It  may  have  been  fancy,  but  I 
thought  nearly  all  of  them  looked  griped  of 
frame  and  that  their  faces  seemed  drawn. 
Seeing  them  so,  you  would  have  said  that, 
with  them,  nothing  mattered  any  more. 

We  saw  a  good  many  people,  though,  who 
[  402 1 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

were  taking  for  the  moment  an  acute  and  un- 
easy interest  in  their  own  affairs,  at  the  big 
city  prison,  where  we  spent  half  an  hour  or 
so.  Here,  in  a  high-walled  courtyard,  we 
found  upward  of  two  hundred  offenders  against 
small  civic  regulations,  serving  sentences  rang- 
ing in  length  from  seven  days  to  thirty.  Per- 
haps one  in  three  was  a  German  soldier,  and 
probably  one  in  ten  was  a  woman  or  a  girl ;  the 
rest  were  male  citizens  of  all  ages,  sizes  and 
social  grading,  a  few  Congo  negroes  being 
mixed  in.  Most  of  the  time  they  stayed  in 
their  cells,  in  solitary  confinement;  but  on 
certain  afternoons  they  might  take  the  air 
and  see  visitors  in  the  bleak  and  barren  inclo- 
sure  where  they  were  now  herded  together. 

By  common  rumor  in  Brussels  the  Germans 
were  shooting  all  persons  caught  secretly 
peddling  copies  of  French  or  English  papers 
or  unauthorized  and  clandestine  Belgian  pa- 
pers; since  only  orthodox  German  papers  were 
permitted  to  be  sold.  The  Germans  themselves 
took  no  steps  to  deny  these  stories,  but  in 
the  prison  we  found  a  large  collection  of  for- 
lorn newsdealers.  Having  been  captured  with 
the  forbidden  wares  in  their  possession,  they 
had  mysteriously  vanished  from  the  ken  of 
their  friends;  but  they  had  not  been  "put 
against  the  wall,"  as  they  say  in  Europe. 
They  had  been  given  fourteen  days  apiece, 
with  a  promise  of  six  months  if  they  trans- 
gressed a  second  time. 

[403] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


One  little  man,  with  the  longest  and  sleekest 
and  silkiest  black  whiskers  I  have  seen  in  many 
a  day,  recognized  us  as  Americans  and  drew 
near  to  tell  us  his  troubles  in  a  confidential 
whisper.  By  his  bleached  indoor  complexion 
and  his  manners  anyone  would  have  known 
him  for  a  pastry  cook  or  a  hairdresser.  A 
hairdresser  he  was;  and  in  a  better  day  than 
this,  not  far  remote,  had  conducted  a  fash- 
ionable establishment  on  a  fashionable  boule- 
vard. 

"Ah,  I  am  in  one  very  sad  state,"  he  said 
in  his  twisted  English.  "I  start  for  Ostend 
to  take  winter  garments  for  my  two  small 
daughters,  which  are  there  at  school,  and 
they  arrest  me — these  Germans — and  keep  me 
two  days  in  a  cowshed,  and  then  bring  me  back 
here  and  put  me  here  in  this  so-terrible-a-placs 
for  two  weeks;  and  all  for  nothing  at  all." 

"Didn't  you  have  a  pass  to  go  through  the 
lines.'*"  I  asked.     "Perhaps  that  was  it." 

"I  have  already  a  pass,"  he  said;  "but 
when  they  search  me  they  find  in  my  pockets 
letters  which  I  am  taking  to  people  in  Ostend. 
I  do  not  know  what  is  in  those  letters.  People 
ask  me  to  take  them  to  friends  of  theirs  in 
Ostend  and  I  consent,  not  knowing  it  is  against 
the  rule.  They  read  these  letters — the  Ger- 
mans— and  say  I  am  carrying  news  to  their 
enemies;  and  they  become  very  enrage  at  me 
and  lock  me  up.  Never  again  will  I  take  let- 
ters for  anybody  anywhere. 
[4041 


THE    RAG    DOLL    OF    EUROPE 

"Oh,  sirs,  if  you  could  but  see  the  food  we 
eat  here!  For  dinner  we  have  a  stew — oh, 
such  a  stew! — and  for  breakfast  only  bread 
and  coffee  who  is  not  coffee!"  And  with  both 
hands  he  combed  his  whiskers  in  a  despair 
that  was  comic  and  yet  pitiful. 

He  was  standing  there,  still  combing,  as  we 
came  away. 


[405] 


CHAPTER  XVI 
LOUVAIN  THE  FORSAKEN 


IT  was  Sunday  when  I  saw  Louvain  in  the 
ashes  of  her  desolation.  We  were  just 
back  then  from  the  German  trenches  be- 
fore Antwerp;  and  the  hollow  sounds  of 
the  big  guns  which  were  fired  there  at  spaced 
intervals  came  to  our  ears  as  we  rode  over  the 
road  leading  out  from  Brussels,  like  the  boom- 
ings  of  great  bells.  The  last  time  I  had  gone 
that  way  the  country  was  full  of  refugees 
fleeing  from  burning  villages  on  beyond.  Now 
it  was  bare,  except  for  a  few  baggage  trains 
lumbering  along  under  escort  of  shaggy  gray 
troopers.  Perhaps  I  should  say  they  were 
gray-and-yellow  troopers,  for  the  plastered 
mud  and  powdered  dust  of  three  months  of 
active  campaigning  had  made  them  of  true 
dirt  color. 

Oh,  yes;  I  forgot  one  other  thing:  We  over- 
took a  string  of  wagons  fitted  up  as  carryalls 
and  bearing  family  parties  of  the  burghers  to 
[4061 


LOUVAIN    THE    FORSAKEN 


Louvain  to  spend  a  day  among  the  wreckage. 
There  is  no  accounting  for  tastes.  If  I  had  been 
a  Belgian  the  last  thing  I  should  want  my 
wife  and  my  baby  to  see  would  be  the  ancient 
university  town,  the  national  cradle  of  the 
Church,  in  its  present  state.  Nevertheless 
there  were  many  excursionists  in  Louvain  that 
day. 

The  Germans  had  taken  down  the  bars 
and  sight-seers  came  by  autobusses  from  as 
far  away  as  Aix-la-Chapelle  and  from  Liege 
and  many  from  Brussels.  They  bought  postal 
cards  and  climbed  about  over  the  mountain 
ranges  of  waste,  and  they  mined  in  the  debris 
mounds  for  souvenirs.  Altogether,  I  suppose 
some  of  them  regarded  it  as  a  kind  of  picnic. 
Personally  I  should  rather  go  to  a  morgue 
for  a  picnic  than  to  Louvain  as  it  looks  to-day. 

I  tried  hard,  both  in  Germany  among  the 
German  soldiers  and  in  Belgium  among  the 
Belgians,  to  get  at  the  truth  about  Louvain. 
The  Germans  said  the  outbreak  was  planned, 
and  that  flring  broke  out  at  a  given  signal  in 
various  quarters  of  the  town;  that,  from 
windows  and  basements  and  roofs,  bullets 
rained  on  them ;  and  that  the  fighting  continued 
until  they  had  smoked  the  last  of  the  inhab- 
itants from  their  houses  with  fire  and  put  them 
to  death  as  they  fled.  The  Belgians  proclaimed 
just  as  stoutly  that,  mistaking  an  on  marching 
regiment  for  enemies,  the  Germans  fired  on 
their  own  people;  and  then,  in  rage  at  having 
[4071 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


'Committed  such  an  error  and  to  cover  it  up, 
ihey  turned  on  the  townspeople  and  mixed 
massacre  with  pillaging  and  burning  for  the 
better  part  of  a  night  and  a  day. 

I  could,  I  think,  sense  something  of  the 
vicTv^oint  of  each.  To  the  Belgian,  a  German  in 
his  home  or  in  his  town  was  no  more  than  an 
armed  housebreaker.  What  did  he  care  for 
the  code  of  war.^^  He  was  not  responsible  for 
the  war.  He  had  no  share  in  framing  the  code. 
He  took  his  gim,  and  when  the  chance  came  he 
fired — and  fired  to  kill.  Perhaps,  at  first,  he 
did  not  know  that  by  that  same  act  he  forfeited 
his  life  and  sacrificed  his  home  and  jeopardized 
the  lives  and  homes  of  all  his  neighbors. 
Perhaps  in  the  blind  fury  of  the  moment  he 
did  not  much  care. 

Take  the  German  soldier:  He  had  proved 
he  was  readj^  to  meet  his  enemy  in  the  open 
and  to  fight  him  there.  When  his  comrade 
fell  at  his  side,  struck  do-^Ti  by  an  unseen, 
skulking  foe,  who  lurked  behind  a  hedge  or 
a  chimney,  he  saw  red  and  he  did  red  deeds. 
That  in  his  reprisals  he  went  farther  than 
the  men  of  any  white  race  would  have  gone 
under  similar  conditions  was  inevitable.  In 
point  of  organization,  in  discipline,  and  in  the 
enactment  of  a  terribly  stern,  terribly  deadly 
course  of  conduct  for  just  such  emergencies, 
his  masters  had  gone  farther  than  the  heads 
of  any  modern  army  ever  went  before.  You 
see,    all    the    laboriously    built-up    ethics    of 

[  408  r 


LOUVAIN    THE    FORSAKEN 


civilized  peace  came  into  direct  conflict  with 
the  bloody  ethics  of  German  militarism  which, 
if  I  am  any  judge,  often  were  born  in  the 
instant  and  molded  on  the  instant  to  suit  the 
purposes  of  those  who  created  them.  And 
Louvain  is  perhaps  the  most  finished  and  per-^ 
feet  example  we  have  in  this  world  to-day  to 
show  the  consequences  of  such  a  clash. 

I  am  not  going  to  try  to  describe  Louvain. 
Others  have  done  that  competently.  The 
Belgians  were  approximately  correct  when 
they  said  Louvain  had  been  destroyed.  The 
Germans  were  technically  right  when  they  said 
not  over  twenty  per  cent  of  its  area  had  been 
reduced;  but  that  twenty  per  cent  included 
practically  the  whole  business  district,  practi- 
cally all  the  better  class  of  homes,  the  univer- 
sity, the  cathedral,  the  main  thoroughfares, 
the  principal  hotels  and  shops  and  cafes.  The 
famous  town  hall  alone  stood  unscathed;  it 
was  saved  by  German  soldiers  from  the  com- 
mon fate  of  all  things  about  it.  What  re- 
mained, in  historic  value  and  in  physical 
beauty,  and  even  in  tangible  property  value, 
was  much  less  than  what  was  gone  forever. 

I  sought  out  the  hotel  near  the  station 
where  we  had  stayed,  as  enforced  guests  of 
the  German  army,  for  three  days  in  August. 
Its  site  was  a  leveled  gray  mass,  sodden, 
wrecked  past  all  redemption;  ruined  beyond 
all  thought  of  salvage.  I  looked  for  the  little 
inn  at  which  w^e  had  dined.  Its  front  wall 
[409] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


littered  the  street  and  its  interior  was  a  jumble 
of  worthlessness.  I  wondered  again  as  I  had 
wondered  many  times  before  what  had  become 
of  its  proprietor — the  dainty,  gentle  little 
woman  whose  misshapen  figure  told  us  she 
was  near  the  time  for  her  baby. 

I  endeavored  to  fix  the  location  of  the  little 
sidewalk  cafe  where  we  sat  on  the  second  or 
the  third  day  of  the  German  occupation — 
August  twenty-first,  I  think,  was  the  date — 
and  watched  the  sun  go  out  in  eclipse  like  a 
copper  disk.  We  did  not  knovv^  it  then,  but 
it  was  Louvain's  bloody  eclipse  we  saw  pres- 
aged that  day  in  the  suddenly  darkened 
heavens.  Even  the  lines  of  the  sidewalks 
were  lost.  The  road  was  piled  high  with  broken, 
fire-smudged  masonry.  The  building  behind 
was  a  building  no  longer.  It  was  a  husk  of  a 
house,  open  to  the  sky,  backless  and  front- 
less,  and  fit  only  to  tumble  down  in  the  next 
high  wind. 

As  we  stood  before  the  empty  railroad 
station,  in  v/hat  I  veritably  believe  to  be  the 
forlornest  spot  there  is  on  this  earth,  a  woman 
in  a  shawl  came  whining  to  sell  us  postal 
cards,  on  which  were  views  of  the  desolation 
that  was  all  about  us. 

"Please  buy  some  pictures,"  she  said  in 
French.     "My  husband  is  dead." 

"When  did  he  die.'^"  one  of  us  asked. 

She  blinked,  as  though  trying  to  remember. 

"That  night,"  she  said  as  though  there  had 
[4101 


LOUVAIN    THE    FORSAKEN 


never  been  but  one  night.  "Tliey  killed  him 
then — that  night." 

"Who  killed  him.?" 

*'They  did." 

She  pointed  in  the  direction  of  the  square 
fronting  the  station.  There  were  German  sol- 
diers where  she  pointed — both  living  ones  and 
dead  ones.  The  dead  ones,  eighty-odd  of 
them,  were  buried  in  two  big  crosswise  trenches, 
in  a  circular  plot  that  had  once  been  a  bed  of 
ornamental  flowers  surrounding  the  monu- 
ment of  some  local  notable.  The  living  ones 
were  standing  sentry  duty  at  the  fence  that 
flanked  the  railroad  tracks  beyond. 

"They  did,"  she  said;  "they  killed  him! 
Will  you  buy  some  postal  cards,  m'sieur.?^ 
All  the  best  pictures  of  the  ruins!" 

She  said  it  flatly,  without  color  in  her  voice, 
or  feeling  or  emotion.  She  did  not,  I  am  sure, 
flinch  mentally  as  she  looked  at  the  Germans. 
Certainly  she  did  not  flinch  visibly.  She  was 
past  flinching,  I  suppose. 

The  officer  in  command  of  the  force  holding 
the  town  came,  just  before  we  started,  to 
warn  us  to  beware  of  bicyclists  who  might 
be  encountered  near  Tirlemont. 

"They  are  all  franc-tireurs — those  Belgians 
on  wheels,"  he  said.  "Some  of  them  are 
straggling  soldiers,  wearing  uniforms  under 
their  other  clothes.  They  will  shoot  at  you 
and  trust  to  their  bicycles  to  get  away.  We've 
caught  and  killed  some  of  them,  but  there  are 
[411] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


still  a  few  abroad.  Take  no  chances  with 
them.  If  I  were  in  your  place  I  should  be  ready 
to  shoot  first." 

We  asked  him  how  the  surviving  populace 
of  Louvain  was  behaving. 

"Oh,  we  have  them — like  that!"  he  said 
with  a  laugh,  and  clenched  his  hand  up  in  a 
knot  of  knuckles  to  show  what  he  meant. 
"They  know  better  than  to  shoot  at  a  Ger- 
man soldier  now;  but  if  looks  would  kill  we'd 
all  be  dead  men  a  hundred  times  a  day."  And 
he  laughed  again. 

Of  course  it  was  none  of  our  business;  but 
it  seemed  to  us  that  if  we  were  choosing  a 
man  to  pacify  and  control  the  ruined  people 
of  ruined  Louvain  this  square-headed,  big- 
fisted  captain  would  not  have  been  our  first 
choice. 

It  began  to  rain  hard  as  our  automobile 
moved  through  the  wreckage-strewn  street 
which,  being  followed,  would  bring  us  to  the 
homeward  road — home  in  this  instance  mean- 
ing Germany.  The  rain,  soaking  into  the 
debris,  sent  up  a  sour,  nasty  smell,  which 
pursued  us  until  we  had  cleared  the  town. 
That  exhalation  might  fully  have  been  the 
breath  of  the  wasted  place,  just  as  the  dis- 
tant, never-ending  boom  of  the  guns  might  have 
been  the  lamenting  voice  of  the  war-smitten 
land  itself. 

I  remember  Liege  best  at  this  present  dis- 
tance by  reason  of  a  small  thing  that  occurred 
[4121 


LOUVAIN    THE    FORSAKEN 


as  we  rode,  just  before  dusk,  through  a  byway 
near  the  river.  In  the  gloomy,  wet  Sunday 
street  two  bands  of  boys  were  playing  at  being 
soldiers.  Being  soldiers  is  the  game  all  the 
children  in  Northern  Europe  have  played  since 
the  first  of  last  August. 

From  doorways  and  window  sills  their 
lounging  elders  watched  these  Liege  urchins 
as  they  waged  their  mimic  fight  with  wooden 
guns  and  wooden  swords;  but,  while  we  looked 
on,  one  boy  of  an  inventive  turn  of  mind  was 
possessed  of  a  great  idea.  He  proceeded  to 
organize  an  execution  against  a  handy  wall, 
with  one  small  person  to  enact  the  role  of  the 
condemned  culprit  and  half  a  dozen  others  to 
make  up  the  firing  squad. 

As  the  older  spectators  realized  what  was 
afoot  a  growl  of  dissent  rolled  up  and  down 
the  street;  and  a  stout,  red-faced  matron, 
shrilly  protesting,  ran  out  into  the  road  and 
cuffed  the  boys  until  they  broke  and  scattered. 
There  was  one  game  in  Liege  the  boys  might 
not  play. 

The  last  I  saw  of  Belgium  was  when  I 
skirted  her  northern  frontier,  making  for  the 
seacoast.  The  guns  were  silent  now,  for 
Antwerp  had  surrendered;  and  over  all  the 
roads  leading  up  into  Holland  refugees  were 
pouring  in  winding  streams.  They  were  such 
refugees  as  I  had  seen  a  score  of  times  before, 
only  now  there  were  infinitely  more  of  them 
than  ever  before:  men,  women  and  children, 
[413] 


PATHS    OF   GLORY 


all  afoot;  all  burdened  with  bags  and  bundles; 
all  dressed  in  their  best  clothes — they  did  well 
to  save  their  best,  since  they  could  save  so 
little  else — all  or  nearly  all  bearing  their  in- 
evitable black  umbrellas. 

They  must  have  come  long  distances;  but 
I  marked  that  none  of  them  moaned  or  com- 
plained, or  gave  up  in  weariness  and  despair. 
They  went  on  and  on,  with  their  w^eary  backs 
bent  to  their  burdens  and  their  weary  legs 
trembling  under  them;  and  we  did  not  know 
where  they  were  going — and  they  did  not 
know.  They  just  went.  What  they  must  face 
before  them  could  not  equal  what  they  left 
behind  them;  so  they  went  on. 

That  poor  little  rag  doll,  with  its  head 
crushed  in  the  wheel  tracks,  does  not  after  all 
furnish  such  a  good  comparison  for  Belgium, 
I  think,  as  I  finish  this  tale;  for  it  had  saw- 
dust insides — and  Belgium's  vitals  are  the 
vitals  of  courage  and  patience. 


[414] 


CHAPTER  XVII 
"THRICE  IS  HE   ARMED- 


I  BELIEVE  it  to  be  my  patriotic  duty 
as  an  American  citizen  to  write  what 
I  am  writing,  and  after  it  is  written  to 
endeavour  to  give  to  it  as  wide  a  circula- 
tion in  the  United  States  as  it  is  possible  to 
find.  In  making  this  statement,  though,  I  am 
not  setting  myself  up  as  a  teacher  or  a  preacher; 
neither  am  I  going  upon  the  assumption 
that,  because  I  am  a  fairly  frequent  con- 
tributor to  American  magazines,  people  will 
be  the  readier  or  should  be  the  readier  to 
read  what  I  have  to  say. 

Aside  from  a  natural  desire  to  do  my  own 
little  bit,  my  chief  reason  is  this:  Largely 
by  chance  and  by  accident,  I  happened  to 
be  one  of  four  or  five  American  newspaper 
men  who  witnessed  at  first  hand  the  German 
invasion  of  Belgium  and  one  of  three  who,  a 
little  later,  witnessed  some  of  the  results 
of  the  Germanic  subjugation  of  the  northern 
[4151 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


part  of  France.  I  was  inside  Germany  at  the 
time  the  rush  upon  Paris  was  checked  and 
the  retreat  from  the  Marne  took  place,  thereby 
having  opportunity  to  take  cognisance  of  the 
feehngs  and  sentiments  and  the  impulses 
which  controlled  the  German  populace  in  a 
period  of  victory  and  in  a  period  of  reversals. 

I  am  in  the  advantageous  position,  there- 
fore, of  being  able  to  recount  as  an  eyewit- 
ness— and,  as  I  hope,  an  honest  one — some- 
thing of  what  war  means  in  its  effects  upon 
the  civilian  populace  of  a  country  caught 
unawares  and  in  a  measure  unprepared;  and, 
more  than  that,  what  war  particularly  and 
especially  means  when  it  is  waged  under 
the  direction  of  officers  trained  in  the  Prussian 
school. 

Having  seen  these  things,  I  hate  war  with 
all  my  heart.  I  am  sure  that  I  hate  it  with 
a  hatred  deeper  than  the  hate  of  you,  reader, 
who  never  saw  its  actual  workings  and  its 
garnered  fruitage.  For,  you  see,  I  saw  the 
physical  side  of  it;  and,  having  seen  it,  I 
want  to  tell  you  that  I  have  no  words  with 
which  halfway  adequately  to  describe  it  for 
you,  so  that  you  may  have  in  your  mind  the 
pictures  I  have  in  mine.  It  is  the  most  ob- 
scene, the  most  hideous,  the  most  brutal,  the 
most  malignant — and  sometimes  the  most 
necessary — spectacle,  I  veritably  believe,  that 
ever  the  eye  of  mortal  man  has  rested  on 
since  the  world  began,  and  I  do  hate  it. 
14161 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


But  since  war  had  to  come — war  for  the 
preservation  of  our  national  honour  and  our 
national  integrity;  war  for  the  defence  of 
our  flag  and  our  people  and  our  soil;  war 
for  the  preservation  of  the  principles  of  rep- 
resentative government  among  the  nations 
of  the  earth — I  would  rather  that  it  came 
now  than  that  it  came  later.  I  have  a  child. 
I  would  rather  that  child,  in  her  maturity, 
might  be  assured  of  living  in  a  peace  guar- 
anteed by  the  sacrifices  and  the  devotion  of 
the  men  and  women  of  this  generation,  than 
that  her  father  should  live  on  in  a  precari- 
ous peace,  bought  and  paid  for  with  cow- 
ardice and  national  dishonour. 

A  few  days  before  war  was  declared,  an 
antimilitarist  mass  meeting  was  held  in  New 
York.  It  was  variously  addressed  by  a  num- 
ber of  well-known  gentlemen  regarding  whose 
purity  of  motive  there  could  be  no  question, 
but  regarding  whose  judgment  a  great  majority 
of  us  have  an  opinion  that  cannot  be  printed 
without  the  use  of  asterisks.  And  it  was 
attended  by  a  very  large  representation  of 
[peace-loving  citizens,  including  a  numerous 
contingent  of  those  peculiar  patriots  who, 
for  the  past  two  years,  have  been  so  very 
distressed  if  any  suggestion  of  hostilities  with 
the  Central  Powers  was  offered,  but  so  agree- 
ably reconciled  if  a  break  with  the  Allies,  or 
any  one  of  them,  seemed  a  contingency. 
[417] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


It  may  have  been  only  a  coincidence,  but 
it  struck  some  of  us  as  a  significant  fact  that, 
from  the  time  of  the  dismissal  of  Count  Von 
Bernstorff  onward,  the  average  pro-peace  meet- 
ing was  pretty  sure  to  resolve  itself  into  some- 
thing rather  closely  resembling  a  pro-German 
demonstration  before  the  evening  was  over. 
Persons  who  hissed  the  name  of  our  President 
behaved  with  respectful  decorum  when  mention 
was  made  of  a  certain  Kaiser. 

However,  I  am  not  now  concerned  with 
these  weird  Americans,  some  of  whom  part 
their  Americanism  in  the  middle  with  a 
hyphen.  Some  of  them  were  in  jail  before 
this  little  book  was  printed.  I  am  thinking 
now  of  those  national  advocates  of  the  policy 
of  the  turned  cheek;  those  professional  pacific- 
ists; those  wavers  of  the  olive  branch — who 
addressed  this  particular  meeting  and  similar 
meetings  that  preceded  it — little  brothers  to 
the  worm  and  the  sheep  and  the  guinea  pig — 
all  of  them — who  preached  not  defence,  but 
submission;  not  a  firm  stand,  but  a  complete 
surrender;  not  action,  but  words,  words,  words. 

Every  right-thinking  man,  I  take  it,  believes 
in  universal  peace  and  realises,  too,  that  we 
shall  have  universal  peace  in  that  fair  day 
when  three  human  attributes,  now  reasonably 
common  among  individuals  and  among  nations, 
have  been  eliminated  out  of  this  world,  these 
three  being  greed,  jealousy  and  evil  temper. 
[4181 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


Every  sane  American  hopes  for  the  time  of 
universal  disarmament,  and  meantime  in- 
dulges in  one  mental  reservation:  He  wants 
all  the  nations  to  put  aside  their  arms;  but 
he  hopes  his  own  nation  will  be  the  last  to 
put  aside  hers.  But  not  every  American — 
thanks  be  to  God! — has  in  these  months  and 
years  of  our  campaign  for  preparedness 
favoured  leaving  his  country  in  a  state  where 
she  might  be  likened  to  a  large,  fat,  rich, 
flabby  oyster,  without  any  shell,  in  a  sea 
full  of  potential  or  actual  enemies,  all  clawed, 
all  toothed,  all  hungry.  The  oyster  may 
be  the  more  popular,  but  it  is  the  hard-shelled 
crab  that  makes  the  best  life-insurance  risk. 

And  when  I  read  the  utterances  of  those 
conscientious  gentlemen,  who  could  not  be 
brought  to  bear  the  idea  of  going  to  war 
with  any  nation  for  any  reason,  I  wished 
with  all  my  soul  they  might  have  stood  with 
me  in  Belgium  on  that  August  day,  when  I 
and  the  rest  of  the  party  to  which  I  belonged 
saw  the  German  legions  come  pouring  down, 
a  cloud  of  smoke  by  day  and  a  pillar  of  fire 
by  night,  with  terror  riding  before  them  as 
their  herald,  and  death  and  destruction  and 
devastation  in  the  tracks  their  war-shod  feet 
left  upon  a  smiling  and  a  fecund  little  land. 
Because  I  am  firmly  of  the  opinion  that  their 
sentiments  would  then  have  undergone  the 
same  instantaneous  transformation  which  the 
feelings  of  each  member  of  my  group  underwent. 
[4191 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Speaking  for  myself,  I  confess  that,  until 
that  summer  day  of  the  year  1914,  I  had 
thought — such  infrequent  times  as  I  gave 
the  subject  any  thought  at  all — that  for  us 
to  spend  our  money  on  heavy  guns  and  an 
augmented  navy,  for  us  to  dream  of  com- 
pulsory military  training  and  a  larger  stand- 
ing army,  would  be  the  concentrated  essence 
of  economic  and  national  folly. 

I  remember  when  Colonel  Roosevelt — then, 
I  believe,  President  Roosevelt — delivered  him- 
self of  the  doctrine  of  the  Big  Stick,  I,  being 
a  good  Democrat,  regarded  him  as  an  incen- 
diary who  would  provoke  the  ill  will  of  great 
Powers,  which  had  for  us  only  a  kindly  feeling, 
by  the  shaking  in  their  faces  of  an  armed  fist. 
I  remember  I  had  said  to  myself,  as,  no  doubt, 
most  Americans  had  said  to  themselves: 

"We  are  a  peaceful  nation;  not  concerned 
with  dreams  of  conquest.  We  have  the 
Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  Oceans  for  our  pro- 
tection. We  are  not  going  to  make  war 
on  anybody  else.  Nobody  else  is  going  to 
make  war  on  us.  W^ar  is  going  out  of  fashion 
all  over  the  planet.  A  passion  for  peace  is 
coming  to  be  the  fashion  of  the  world.  The 
lion  and  the  lamb  lie  down  together." 

W'ell,  the  lion  and  the  lamb  did  lie  down 
together — over  there  in  Europe;  and  when 
the  lion  rose,  a  raging  lion,  he  had  the  mangled 
carcass  of  the  lamb  beneath  his  bloodied 
paws.  And  it  was  on  the  day  when  I  first 
[4201 


'THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


saw  the  lion,  with  his  jaws  adrip,  coming 
down  the  highroads,  typified  in  half  a  million 
fighting  men — men  whose  sole  business  in 
life  was  to  fight,  and  who  knew  their  business 
as  no  other  people  ever  have  known  it — 
that  in  one  flash  of  time  I  decided  I  wanted 
my  country  to  quit  being  lamb-like,  not 
because  the  lion  was  a  pleasing  figure  before 
mine  eyes,  but  because  for  the  first  time  I 
realized  that,  so  long  as  there  are  lions,  sooner 
or  later  must  come  oppression  and  annihilation 
for  the  nation  which  persists  in  being  one  of  the 
lambs. 

As  though  it  happened  yesterday,  instead 
of  thirty  months  ago,  I  can  recreate  in  my 
mind  the  physical  and  the  mental  stage  set- 
tings of  that  moment.  I  can  shut  my  eyes 
and  see  the  German  firing  squad  shooting 
two  Belgian  civilians  against  a  brick  wall.  I 
can  smell  the  odours  of  the  burning  houses. 
Yes,  and  the  smell  of  the  burning  flesh  of 
the  dead  men  who  wete  in  those  houses.  I 
can  hear  the  sound  of  the  footsteps  of  the 
fleeing  villagers  and  the  rumble  of  the  tread 
of  the  invaders  going  by  so  countlessly,  so 
confidently,  so  triumphantly,  so  magnificently,' 
disciplined  and  so  faultlessly  equipped. 

Most  of  all,  I  can  see  the  eyes  and  the 
faces  of  sundry  German  officers  with  whom 
I  spoke.  And  when  I  do  this  I  see  their 
eyes  shining  with  joy  and  their  faces  trans- 
figured as  though  by  a  splendid  vision;  and 
[421] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


I  can  hear  them — not  proclaiming  the  jus- 
tice of  their  cause;  not  seeking  excuse  for 
the  reprisals  they  had  ordered;  not,  save 
for  a  few  exceptions  air.ong  them,  deploring 
the  unutterable  misery  and  suffering  their 
invasion  of  Belgium  had  wrought;  not  con- 
cerned with  the  ethical  rights  of  helpless 
and  innocent  noncombatants — but  proud  and 
swollen  Vvith  the  thought  that,  at  every  on- 
ward step,  ruthlessness  and  determination 
and  being  ready  had  brought  to  them  victory, 
conquest,  spoils  of  war.  Why,  these  men 
were  like  beings  from  another  world — a  world 
of  whose  existence  we,  on  this  side  of  the 
water,  had  never  dreamed. 

And  it  was  then  I  promised  myself,  if  I 
had  the  luck  to  get  back  home  again  with 
a  whole  skin  and  a  tongue  in  my  head  and 
a  pen  in  my  hand,  I  would  in  my  humble 
way  preach  preparedness  for  America;  not 
preparedness  with  a  view  necessarily  of  making 
war  upon  any  one  else,  but  preparedness 
with  a  view  essentially  of  keeping  any  one 
else  from  making  war  upon  us  without  count- 
ing the  risks  beforehand. 

In  my  own  humble  and  personal  way  I 
have  been  preaching  it.  In  my  own  humble 
and  personal  way  I  am  preaching  it  right 
this  minute.  And  if  my  present  narrative  is 
so  very  personal  it  is  because  I  know  that 
the  personal  illustration  is  the  best  possible 
illustration,  and  that  one  may  drive  home 
[4221 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


liis  point  by  telling  the  things  he  himself 
has  seen  and  felt  better  than  by  dealing  with 
the  impressions  and  the  facts  which  have 
come  to  him  at  secondhand. 

Also,  it  seems  to  me,  since  the  break  came, 
that  now  I  am  free  to  use  weapons  which 
I  did  not  feel  I  had  the  right  to  use  before 
that  break  did  come.  Before,  I  was  a  news- 
paper reporter,  engaged  in  describing  what 
I  saw  and  what  I  heard — not  what  I  suspected 
and  what  I  feared.  Before,  I  was  a  neutral 
citizen  of  a  neutral  country. 

I  am  not  a  neutral  any  more.  I  am  an 
American!  My  country  has  clashed  with 
a  foreign  Power,  and  the  enemy  of  my  country 
is  my  enemy  and  deserving  of  no  more  con- 
sideration at  my  hands  than  he  deserves 
at  the  hands  of  my  country.  Moreover,  I 
aim  to  try  to  show,  as  we  go  along,  that  any 
consideration  of  mercy  or  charity  or  magna- 
nimity which  we  might  show  him  would  be 
misinterpreted.  Being  what  he  is  he  would 
not  understand  it.  He  would  consider  it  as  an 
evidence  of  weakness  upon  our  part.  It  is 
v/hat  he  would  not  show  us,  and  if  opportunity 
comes  will  not  show  us,  any  more  than  he 
showed  it  to  Belgium  or  to  France,  or  to  Edith 
Cavell,  or  to  those  women  and  those  babies 
on  the  Lusitania. 

He  did  not  make  war  cruel — it  already 
was  that;  but  he  has  kept  it  cruel.  War 
with  him  is  not  an  emotional  pastime;  not 
[4231 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


a  time  for  hysterical  lip  service  to  his  flag; 
not  a  time  for  fuss  and  feathers.  And,  most 
of  all,  it  is  to  him  not  a  time  for  any  display 
of  mawkish,  maudlin  forbearance  to  his  foe; 
but,  instead,  it  is  a  deadly  serious,  deadly 
terrible  business,  to  the  successful  prosecution 
of  which  he  and  his  rulers,  and  his  govern- 
ment, and  his  whole  system  of  life  have  been 
earnestly  and  sincerely  dedicated  through  a 
generation  of  preparation,  mental  as  well  as 
physical. 

When  I  think  back  on  those  first  stages — 
and  in  some  respects  the  most  tragic  stages 
— of  the  great  war,  I  do  not  see  it  as  a  thing 
of  pomp  and  glory,  of  splendid  panorama, 
pitched  on  a  more  impressive  scale  than  any 
movement  ever  was  in  all  the  history  of  man- 
kind. I  do  not,  in  retrospect,  see  the  sunlight 
glinting  on  the  long,  unending,  weaving  lanes 
of  bayonets;  or  the  troops  pouring  in  grey 
streams,  like  molten  quicksilver,  along  all 
those  dusty  highroads  of  Northern  Europe; 
or  the  big  guns  belching;  or  the  artillery 
horses  going  galloping  into  action;  or  the 
trenches;  or  the  camps;  or  the  hospitals;  or 
the  battlefields.  I  see  it  as  it  is  reflected  in 
certain  little,  detached  pictures — small-focused, 
and  incidental  to  the  great  horror  of  which 
they  were  an  unconsidered  part — but  which, 
to  me,  tjT^ify,  most  fitly  of  all,  what  war  means 
when  waged  by  the  rote  and  rule  of  Prussian 
f  424 1 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


militarism   upon   the   civilian    populace   of  an 
invaded  country. 

Always,  too,  when  thinking  of  the  war, 
I  think  of  the  refugees  I  saw,  but  mostly 
of  those  I  saw  after  Antwerp  had  fallen  in 
the  early  days  of  October  and  I  was  skirting 
Holland  on  my  way  back  out  of  Germany  to 
the  English  Channel.  I  had  seen  enough 
refugees  before  then,  God  knows! — men  and 
women  and  children,  old  men  and  old  women, 
and  little  children  and  babies  in  arms,  fleeing 
by  the  lights  of  their  own  burning  houses 
over  rainy,  wind-swept,  muddy  roads;  vast 
caravans  of  homeless  misery,  whose  members 
marched  on  and  on  until  they  dropped  from 
exhaustion.  And  when  they  had  rested  a 
while  at  the  miry  roadside,  with  no  beds 
beneath  them  but  the  earth  and  no  shelters 
above  them  but  the  black  umbrellas  to  which 
they  clung,  they  got  up  and  went  on  again, 
with  no  destination  in  view  and  no  goal  ahead; 
but  only  knowing,  I  suppose,  that  what  might 
lie  in  front  of  them  could  not  be  worse  than 
what  they  left  behind  them.  But  never — 
until  after  Antwerp — did  there  seem  to  be 
so  many  of  them,  and  never  did  their  plight 
seem  so  pitiable.  Over  every  road  that  ran 
up  out  of  Belgium  into  Holland — and  that 
in  this  populous  corner  of  Europe  meant  a 
road  every  little  while — they  poured  all  day 
in  thick,  jostling,  unending,  unbroken  streams. 
I  marked  how  the  sides  of  every  wayside 
[4251 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


building  along  the  Dutch  frontier  was  scrawled 
over  with  the  names  of  hundreds  of  refugees, 
who  already  had  passed  that  way;  and,  along 
with  their  names,  the  names  of  their  own 
people,  from  whom  they  were  separated  in 
the  haste  and  terror  of  flight,  and  who — by  one 
chance  in  a  thousand — might  come  that  way 
and  read  what  was  there  written,  and  fol- 
low on. 

This  was  the  larger  picture.  Now  for  a 
small  corner  of  the  canvas:  I  remember  a 
squalid  little  cowshed  in  a  little  Dutch  town 
on  the  border,  just  before  dusk  of  a  wet, 
raw  autumnal  night.  Under  the  dripping 
eaves  of  that  cowshed  stood  an  old  man — 
a  very  old  man.  He  must  have  been  all  of 
eighty.  Ris  garments  were  sopping  wet,  and 
all  that  he  owned  now  of  this  world's  goods 
rested  at  his  feet,  tied  up  in  the  rags  of  an  old 
red  tablecloth.  In  one  withered,  trembling 
old  hand  he  held  a  box  of  matches,  and  in  the 
other  a  piece  of  chalk.  With  one  hand  he 
scratched  match  after  match;  and  with  the 
other,  on  the  wall  of  that  little  cowshed,  he 
wrote,  over  and  over  and  over  again,  his  name; 
and  beneath  it  the  name  of  the  old  wife  from 
whom  he  was  separated — doubtlessly  forever. 

Possibly  these  things  might  have  come  to 
pass  in  any  war,  whether  or  not  Germans 
were  concerned  in  making  that  war;  prob- 
ably they  should  be  included  among  the  in- 
evitable by-products  of  the  institution  called 
[4261 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


warfare.     That,  however,  did  not  make  them 
the  less  sorrowful. 

The  point  I  am  trying  to  make  is  this: 
That,  seeing  such  sights,  and  a  thousand 
more  like  them,  I  could  picture  the  same 
things — and  a  thousand  worse  things — hap- 
pening in  my  own  country.  With  better 
reason,  I  to-day  can  picture  them  as  happening 
in  my  own  country;  and  in  all  fairness  I  go 
further  than  that  and  say  that  I  can  conceive 
them  as  being  all  the  more  likely  to  happen 
should  the  invading  forces  come  at  us  under 
that  design  of  a  black  vulture  which  is  known 
as  the  Imperial  Prussian  Eagle.  Given  similar 
conditions  and  similar  opportunities,  and  I 
can  see  Holyoke,  Massachusetts,  or  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  razed  in  smoking  ruins,  as 
Lou  vain  or  as  Dinant  was.  I  can  see  the 
mayor  of  Baltimore  being  put  to  death  by 
drum-head  court-martial  because  some  in- 
flamed civilian  of  his  town  fired  from  a  cottage 
window  at  a  Pomeranian  grenadier.  I  can 
see  in  Pennsylvania  congressmen  and  judges 
and  clergymen  and  G.  A.  R.  veterans  held  as 
hostages  and  as  potential  victims  of  the  firing 
squad,  in  case  some  son  or  some  grandson 
of  old  John  Burns,  of  Gettysburg,  not  regularly 
enrolled,  takes  up  his  shotgun  in  defence  of  his 
homestead.  I  can  see  a  price  put  on  the  head 
of  some  modern  Molly  Pitcher,  and  a  military 
prison  waiting  for  some  latter-day  Barbara 
[427] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


Frietchfa.  For  we  must  remember  that  what 
we  Americans  call  patriots  the  anointed  War 
Lord  calls  fra?ic-tireurs,  meaning  bushwhackers. 

I  do  not  believe  I  personally  can  be  charged 
with  an  evinced  bias  against  '  the  German 
Army,  as  based  on  what  I  saw  of  its  opera- 
tions in  the  opening  months  of  the  war.  Be- 
cause I  had  an  admiration  for  the  courage 
and  the  fortitude  of  the  German  common 
soldier,  and  because  I  expressed  that  admira- 
tion, I  was  charged  with  being  pro-German 
by  persons  who  seemingly  did  not  understand 
or  want  to  understand  that  a  spectator  may 
admire  the  individual  without  in  the  least 
sympathising  with  the  causes  which  sent  him 
into  the  field.  And  at  a  time  when  this  country 
was  filled  with  stories  of  barbarities  committed 
upon  Belgian  civilians  by  German  soldiers — 
stories  of  the  mutilating  of  babies,  of  the  raping 
of  women,  of  the  torturing  of  old  men — I  was 
one  of  several  experienced  newspapermen  who, 
all  of  our  own  free  will  and  not  under  duress 
or  coercion,  signed  a  statement  in  which  we 
severally  and  jointly  stated  that,  in  our  experi- 
ences when  travelling  with  or  immediately 
■  behind  the  German  columns  through  upward 
of  a  hundred  miles  of  Belgian  territory,  we 
had  been  unable  to  discover  good  evidence 
of  a  single  one  of  these  alleged  atrocities. 
Nor  did  we. 

What  I  tried  to  point  out  at  the  time — 
in  the  fall  of  1914— and  what  I  would  point 
[  428  ] 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


out  again  in  justice  to  those  who  now  are 
our  enemies,  is  that  identically  the  same 
accounts  of  atrocities  which  were  told  in  Eng- 
land and  in  America  as  having  been  per- 
petrated by  Germans  upon  Belgians  and 
Frenchmen,  were  simultaneously  repeated 
in  Germany  as  having  been  perpetrated  by 
Belgians  and  Frenchmen  upon  German  nuns 
and  German  wounded;  and  were  just  as 
firmly  believed  in  Germany  as  in  America 
and  Britain,  and  had,  as  I  veritably  believe, 
just  as  little  foundation  of  fact  in  one  quarter 
as  in  the  other  quarters. 

Indeed,  I  am  willing  to  go  still  further 
and  say,  because  of  the  rigorous  discipline 
by  which  the  German  common  soldier  is 
bound,  that  in  the  German  occupation  of 
hostile  territory  opportunities  for  the  indi- 
vidual brute  or  the  individual  degenerate 
to  commit  excesses  against  the  individual 
victim  were  greatly  reduced.  Of  course  there 
must  have  been  sporadic  instances  of  hideous 
acts — there  always  have  been  where  men 
went  to  war;  but  I  have  never  been  able  to 
bring  myself  to  believe  that  such  acts  could 
have  been  a  part  of  a  systematic  or  organised 
campaign  of  f rightfulness.  There  was  plenty 
of  the  frightfulness  without  these  added  horrors. 

But  I  was  an  eyewitness  to  crimes  which, 

measured  by  the  standards  of  humanity  and 

civilization,  impressed  me  as  worse  than  any 

individual  excess,  any  individual  outrage,  could 

[4291 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


ever  have  been  or  can  ever  be;  because  these 
crimes  indubitably  were  instigated  on  a  whole- 
sale basis  by  order  of  officers  of  rank,  and 
must  have  been  carried  out  under  their  per- 
sonal supervision,  direction  and  approval. 
Briefly,  what  I  saw  was  this:  I  saw  wide 
areas  of  Belgium  and  France  in  which  not  a 
penny's  worth  of  wanton  destruction  had  been 
permitted  to  occur,  m  which  the  ripe  pears 
hung  untouched  upon  the  garden  walls;  and  I 
saw  other  wide  areas  where  scarcely  one  stone 
had  been  left  to  stand  upon  another;  where 
the  fields  were  ravaged;  where  the  male  vil- 
lagers had  been  shot  in  squads;  where  the 
miserable  survivors  had  been  left  to  den  in 
holes,  like  wild  beasts. 

Taking  the  physical  evidence  offered  before 
our  own  eyes,  and  buttressing  it  with  the 
statements  made  to  us,  not  only  by  natives 
but  by  German  soldiers  and  German  officers, 
we  could  reach  but  one  conclusion,  which 
was  that  here,  in  such-and-such  a  place,  those 
in  command  had  said  to  the  troops:  "Spare 
this  town  and  these  people!"  And  there  they 
had  said:  "Waste  this  tovm  and  shoot  these 
people!"  And  here  the  troops  had  discrimi- 
nately  spared,  and  there  they  had  indis- 
criminately wasted,  in  exact  accordance  with 
the  word  of  their  superiors. 

Doubtlessly  you  read  the  published  extracts 
from  diaries  taken  off  the  bodies  of  killed  or 
[4301 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED' 


captured  German  soldiers  in  the  first  year 
of  the  war.  Didn't  you  often  read  where 
this  soldier  or  that,  setting  down  his  own 
private  thoughts,  had  lamented  at  having  been 
required  to  put  his  hand  to  the  task  of  killing 
and  destroying?  But,  from  this  same  source, 
did  you  ever  get  evidence  that  any  soldier 
had  actually  revolted  against  this  campaign  of 
cruelty,  and  had  refused  to  burn  the  homes 
of  helpless  civilians  or  to  slay  unresisting 
noncombatants?  You  did  not,  and  for  a 
very  good  reason:  Because  that  rebellious 
soldier  would  never  have  lived  long  enough 
to  write  down  the  record  of  his  humanity 
— he  would  have  been  shot  dead  by  the  re- 
volver of  his  own  captain  or  his  own  lieu- 
tenant. 

I  saw  German  soldiers  marching  through 
a  wrecked  and  ravished  countryside,  sing- 
ing their  German  songs  about  the  home  place, 
and  the  Christmas  tree,  and  the  Rhine  maiden 
— creatures  so  full  of  sentiment  that  they 
had  no  room  in  their  souls  for  sympathy. 
And,  by  the  same  token,  I  saw  German  soldiers 
dividing  their  rations  with  hungry  Belgians. 
They  divided  their  rations  with  these  famished 
ones  because  it  was  not  verboien  —  because 
there  was  no  order  to  the  contrary.  Had  there 
been  an  order  to  the  contrary,  those  poor 
women  and  those  scrawny  children  might  have 
starved,  and  no  German  soldier,  whatever 
his  private  feelings,  would  have  dared  offer 
[431] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


to  them  a  crust  of  bread  or  a  bone  of  beef. 
Of  that  I  am  very  sure. 

And  it  seemed  to  me  then,  and  it  seems 
to  me  now,  a  most  dangerous  thing  for  all 
the  peoples  of  the  earth,  and  a  most  evil 
thing,  that  into  the  world  should  come  a 
scheme  of  military  government  so  hellishly 
contrived  and  so  exactly  directed  that,  by 
the  flirt  of  a  colonel's  thumb,  a  thousand 
men  may,  at  will,  be  transformed  from  kindly, 
courageous,  manly  soldiers  into  relentless, 
ruthless  executioners  and  incendiaries;  and, 
by  another  flirt  of  that  supreme  and  arrogant 
thumb,  be  converted  back  again  into  decent 
men. 

In  peace  the  mental  docility  of  the  German, 
his  willingness  to  accept  an  order  unquestion- 
ingly  and  mechanically  to  obey  it,  may  be  a 
virtue,  as  we  reckon  racial  traits  of  a  people 
among  their  virtues;  in  war  this  same  trait 
becomes  a  vice.  In  peace  it  makes  him  yet 
more  peaceful;  in  war  it  gives  to  his  manner 
of  waging  war  an  added  sinister  menace. 

It  is  that  very  menace  which  must  confront 
the  American  troopers  who  are  now  going 
abroad  for  service.  It  is  that  very  menace 
which  must  confront  our  people  at  home  in 
the  event  that  the  enemy  shall  get  near  enough 
to  our  coasts  to  bombard  our  shore  cities,  or 
should  he  succeed  in  landing  an  expeditionary 
force  upon  American  soil. 
[4321 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED' 


When  I  first  came  back  from  the  war  front 
I  marvelled  that  sensible  persons  so  often 
asked  me  what  sort  of  people  the  Germans 
were,  as  though  Germans  were  a  stranger 
race,  like  Patagonians  or  the  South  Sea 
Islanders,  living  in  some  remote  and  untravelled 
corner  of  the  globe.  I  felt  like  telling  them 
that  Germans  in  Germany  were  like  the  Ger- 
mans they  knew  in  America — in  the  main, 
God-fearing,  orderly,  hard-working,  self-re- 
specting citizens.  But  through  these  interven- 
ing months  I  have  changed  my  mind;  to-day 
I  should  make  a  different  answer.  I  would 
say,  to  him  who  asked  that  question  now, 
that  the  same  tractability  of  temperament 
which,  under  the  easy-going,  flexible  workings 
of  our  American  plan  of  living  makes  the 
German-born  American  so  readily  conform 
to  his  physical  and  metaphysical  surroundings 
here,  and  makes  his  progeny  so  soon  to  amalga- 
mate with  our  fused  and  conglomerated  stock, 
has  the  effect,  in  his  Fatherland,  of  all  the 
more  easily  and  all  the  more  firmly  filling 
his  mind  and  shaping  his  deeds  in  conformity 
with  the  exact  and  rigorous  demands  of  the 
Prussianism  that  has  been  shackled  upon  him 
since  his  empire  ceased  to  be  a  group  of  petty 
states. 

We  have  got  to  remember,  then,  that  the 

Germany  with  which  we  have  broken  is  not 

the  Germany  of  Heine  and  Goethe  and  Haeckel 

and  Beethoven;    not  the  Germany  which  gave 

[433] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


US  Steuben  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  and 
Sigel  and  Schurz  in  the  Civil  War;  not  the 
Germany  of  the  chivalrous,  lovable  Saxon,  or  yet 
of  the  music-loving,  home-loving  Bavarians; 
not  the  Germany  which  was  the  birthplace 
of  the  kindly,  honourable,  industrious,  patriotic 
German-speaking  neighbour  round  the  corner 
from  you — but  the  fanatical,  tyrannical,  power- 
mad,  blood-and-iron  Prussianised  Germany 
of  Bismarck  and  Von  Bernhardi,  of  the  Crown 
Prince  and  the  Junkers — that  passionate  Prus- 
sianised Germany  which  for  forty  years  through 
the  instrumentality  of  its  ruling  classes — not 
necessarily  its  Kaiser,  but  its  real  ruling  classes 
— has  been  jealously  striving  to  pervert  every 
native  ounce  of  its  scientific  and  its  inventive 
and  its  creative  genius  out  of  the  paths  of 
progress  and  civilisation  and  to  jam  it  into  the 
grooves  of  the  greatest  autocratic  machine, 
the  greatest  organism  for  killing  off  human 
beings,  the  greatest  engine  of  misbegotten 
and  misdirected  eflBciency  that  was  ever  cre- 
ated in  the  world.  Because  we  have  an 
admiration  for  one  of  these  two  Germ  any  s 
is  no  more  a  reason  why  we  should  abate 
our  indignation  and  our  detestation  for  the 
other  Germany  than  that  because  a  man 
loves  a  cheery  blaze  upon  his  hearthstone 
he  should  refuse  to  fight  a  forest  fire. 

We   have  got   to   remember  another   thing. 
If     our     oversea     observations     of     this     vrp.r 
abroad  have  taught  us  anything,  they  shouM 
[4341 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED" 


have  taught  us  that  the  German  Army — 
and  when  I  say  army  I  mean  in  this  case, 
not  its  men  but  its  officers,  since  in  the  Ger- 
man Army  the  officers  are  essentially  the 
brain  and  the  power  and  the  motive  force 
!  directing  the  unthinking,  blindly  obedient 
mass  beneath  them — that  the  German  Army 
is  not  an  army  of  good  sportsmen.  And 
that,  I  take  it,  is  an  even  more  important 
consideration  upon  the  field  of  battle  than 
it  is  upon  the  athletic  field.  As  the  saying 
goes,  the  Germans  don't  play  the  game.  It 
is  as  unconceivable  to  imagine  German  of- 
ficers going  in  for  baseball  or  football  or 
cricket  as  it  is  to  imagine  American  volun- 
teers marching  the  goose  step  or  to  imagine 
Englishmen  relishing  the  cut-and-dried  cal- 
isthenics of  a  Turnverein. 

The  Germans  are  not  an  outdoor  race; 
they  are  not  given  to  playing  outdoor  sports 
and  abiding  by  the  rules  of  those  sports,  as 
Englishmen  and  as  Americans  are.  And  in 
war — that  biggest  of  all  outdoor  games — it 
stands  proved  against  them  that  they  do  not 
play  according  to  the  rules,  except  they  be 
rules  of  their  own  making.  It  may  be 
argued  that  the  French  are  not  an  outdoor 
race  or  a  sport-loving  race,  as  we  conceive 
sports.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  French- 
man is  essentially  romantic  and  essentially 
dramatic,  and,  whether  in  war  or  in  victory 
afterward,  he  is  likely  to  exliibit  the  mag- 
[435  1 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


nanimous  and  the  generous  virtues  rather 
than  the  cruel  and  the  unkindly  ones,  because, 
as  we  all  know,  it  is  easier  to  dramatize  one's 
good  impulses  than  one's  evil  ones. 

Now  the  German,  as  has  recently  been 
shown,  is  neither  dramatic  nor  sportsman- 
like. He  is  a  greedy  winner  and  he  is  a  bad 
loser — a  most  remarkably  bad  loser.  Good 
sportsmen  would  not  have  broken  Belgium 
into  bloody  bits  because  Belgium  stood  be- 
tween them  and  their  goal;  good  sportsmen 
would  not  have  sung  the  Hymn  of  Hate,  or 
made  "Gott  Strafe  England!"  their  battle 
cry;  good  sportsmen  would  not  have  shot 
Edith  Cavell  or  sunk  the  Lusitania.  Good 
sportsmen  would  not  have  packed  the  help- 
less men  and  boys  of  a  conquered  and  a  pros- 
trate land  off  as  captives  into  an  enforced 
servitude  worse  than  African  slavery;  would 
not  wantonly  have  wasted  La  Fere  and  Chauny 
and  Ham,  and  a  hundred  other  French  towns, 
as  they  did  in  March  and  April  of  last  year, 
for  no  conceivable  reason  than  that  they  must 
surrender  these  towns  back  into  the  hand  of 
the  enemy;  would  not  have  cut  dowTi  the 
little  orchard  trees  nor  shovelled  dung  into 
the  drinking  wells;  would  not,  while  ostensibly 
at  peace  with  us,  have  plotted  to  destroy  our 
industrial  plants  and  to  plant  the  seeds  of 
sedition  among  our  foreign-born  citizens,  and 
to  dismember  our  country,  parceling  it  out 
between  a  brown  race  in  Mexico  and  a  yellow 
[4361 


"THRICE    IS    HE    ARMED' 


race  in  Japan.  Good  sports  do  not  do  these 
things,  and  Germany  did  all  of  them.  That 
means  something. 

Having  spread  the  gospel  of  force  for  so 
long,  Prussianised  Germany  can  understand 
but  one  counter-argument — force.  We  must 
give  her  back  blow  for  blow — a  harder  blow 
in  return  for  each  blow  she  gives  us.  "Thrice 
is  he  armed  that  hath  his  quarrel  just";  and 
our  quarrel  is  just.  All  the  same,  to  make 
war  successfully  we  must  make  it  with  a  whole 
heart.  We  must  hold  it  to  be  a  holy  war; 
we  must  preach  a  jihad,  remembering  always, 
now  that  the  Chinese  Empire  is  a  republic, 
now  that  Russia  by  revolution  has  thrown 
off  the  chains  of  autocracy,  that  we  are  fighting 
not  only  to  punish  the  enemy  for  wrongs  in- 
flicted and  insults  overpatiently  endured;  net 
only  to  make  the  seas  free  to  honest  commerce; 
not  only  for  the  protection  of  our  flag  and  our 
ships  and  the  lives  of  our  people  at  home  and 
abroad — but  along  with  England,  France  and 
Italy — are  fighting  for  the  preservation  of  the 
principles  of  constitutional  and  representative 
government  against  those  few  remaining 
crowned  heads  who  hold  by  the  divine  right 
of  kings,  and  who  believe  that  man  was  created 
not  a  self-governing  creature  but  a  vassal. 


437] 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  PRUSSIAN  PARANOIA 


I  AM  coming  now  to  what  seems  to  me  to 
be  the  most  important  consideration  of 
all.  In  this  war  upon  which  we  have 
entered  our  chief  enemy  is  a  nation  firmly 
committed  to  the  belief  that  whatever  it  may 
do  is  most  agreeable  in  the  sight  of  God.  It  is 
firmly  committed  to  the  belief  that  the  acts  of 
its  Kaiser,  its  Crown  Prince,  its  government, 
its  statesmen,  its  generals  and  its  armies 
are  done  in  accordance  with  the  will  and  the 
purposes  of  God.  And,  by  the  same  token, 
it  is  committed,  with  equal  firmness,  to  the 
conviction  that  the  designs  and  the  deeds 
of  all  the  nations  and  all  the  peoples  opposed 
to  their  nation  must  perforce  be  obnoxious 
to  God.  By  the  processes  of  their  own  peculiar 
theology — a  theology  which  blossomed  and 
began  to  bear  its  fruit  after  the  war  started, 
but  for  which  the  seed  had  been  sown  long 
before — God  is  not  Our  God  but  Their  God. 
[4381 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


He  is  not  the  common  creator  of  mankind, 
but  a  special  Creator  of  Teutons.  He  is  a 
German  God.  For  you  to  say  this  would 
sound  in  American  ears  like  sacrilege.  For 
me  to  write  it  down  here  smacks  of  blasphemy 
and  impiety.  But  to  the  German— in  Ger- 
many— it  is  sound  religion,  founded  upon 
the  Gospels  and  the  Creed,  proven  in  the 
Scriptures,  abundantly  justified  in  the  per- 
formances and  the  intentions  of  an  anointed 
and  a  sanctified  few  millions  among  all  the 
unnumbered  millions  who  breed  upon  the 
earth. 

Now  here,  by  way  of  a  beginning,  is  the 
proof  of  it.  This  proof  is  to  be  found  in 
a  collection  of  original  poems  published  by 
a  German  pastor,  the  Reverend  Herr  Dok- 
tor  Konsistorialat  D,  Vorwerk.  In  the  first 
edition  of  his  book  there  occurred  a  para- 
phrase of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  of  which  the 
following  are  the  last  three  petitions  and 
the  close: 

"Though  the  warrior's  bread  be  scanty, 
do  Thou  work  daily  death  and  tenfold  woe 
unto  the  enemy.  Forgive  in  merciful  long- 
suffering  each  bullet  and  each  blow  which 
misses  its  mark!  Lead  us  not  into  the  temp- 
tation of  letting  our  wrath  be  too  tame  in 
carrying  out  Thy  divine  judgment!  Deliver 
us  and  our  Ally  from  the  infernal  Enemy 
and  his  servants  on  earth.  Thine  is  the 
f  439 1 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


kingdom,  The  German  Land;  may  we,  by 
aid  of  Thy  steel-clad  hand,  achieve  the  power 
and  the  glory." 

From  subsequent  editions  of  the  work  of 
Pastor  Vorwerk  this  prayer  was  omitted. 
It  is  said  to  have  been  denounced  as  blas- 
phemous by  a  religious  journal,  published 
in  Germany — but  not  in  Berlin.  But  evi- 
dently no  one  within  the  German  Empire, 
either  in  authority  or  out  of  it,  found  any 
fault  with  the  worthy  pastor's  sentiment 
that  the  Germans,  above  all  other  races — 
except  possibly  the  Turks,  who  appear  to 
have  been  taken  into  the  Heavenly  fold  by 
a  special  dispensation — are  particularly  fa- 
voured and  endowed  of  God,  and  enjoy  His 
extraordinary — one  might  almost  be  tempted 
to  say  His  private — guardianship,  love  and 
care.  For  in  varying  forms  this  fetishism 
is  expressed  in  scores  of  places.  Consider 
this  example,  which  cannot  have  lost  much 
of  its  original  force  in  translation : 

*'How  can  it  be  that  Germany  is  surrounded 
by  nothing  but  enemies  and  has  not  a  single 
friend.^  Is  not  this  Germany's  own  fault? 
No!  Do  you  not  know  that  Prince  of  Hades, 
whoSe  name  is  Envy,  and  who  unites  scoundrels 
and  sunders  heroes?  Let  us,  therefore,  rejoice 
that  Envy  has  thus  risen  up  against  us;  it 
only  shows  that  God  has  exalted  and  richly 
[440] 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


blessed  us.  Think  of  Him  who  was  hanged 
on  the  Cross  and  seemed  forsaken  of  God, 
and  had  to  tread  in  such  loneliness  His  path 
to  victory!  My  German  people,  even  if  thy 
jroad  be  strev/n  w^ith  thorns  and  beset  by 
!  enemies,  press  onward,  filled  with  defiance  and 
confidence.  The  heavenly  ladder  is  still  stand- 
ing.    Thou  and  thy  God,  ye  are  the  majority!" 

I  have  quoted  these  extracts  from  the 
printed  and  circulated  book  of  an  ordained 
and  reputable  German  clergyman,  and  pre- 
sumably also  a  popular  and  respected  Ger- 
man clergyman,  because  I  honestly  believe 
them  to  be  not  the  individual  mouthings  of 
an  isolated  fanatic,  but  the  voice  of  an  enor- 
mous number  of  his  fellow  countrymen,  ex- 
pressing a  conviction  that  has  come  to  be 
common  among  them  since  August,  1914. 

I  believe,  further,  that  they  should  be 
quoted  because  knowledge  of  them  will  the 
better  help  our  own  people  here  in  the  United 
States  to  understand  the  temper  of  a  vast 
group  of  our  enemies;  will  help  us  to  under- 
stand the  motives  behind  some  of  the  forms 
of  hostility  and  reprisal  that  undoubtedly 
they  are  going  to  attempt  to  inflict  upon  the 
United  States;  help  us,  I  hope,  to  understand 
that,  upon  our  part,  in  waging  this  war  an 
over-measure  of  forbearance,  a  mistaken  char- 
ity, or  a  faith  in  the  virtue  of  his  fair  promises 
is  only  wasted  when  it  is  visited  upon  an 
[441] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


adversary  who,  for  his  part,  is  upborne  by  the 
perverted  spirituaHsni  and  the  degenerated 
self-idolatry  of  a  Mad  Mullah.  It  is  all  very 
well  to  pour  oil  on  troubled  waters;  it  is 
foolishness  to  pour  it  on  wildfire. 

In  this  same  connection  it  may  not  be 
amiss  for  us  to  consider  the  predominant 
and  predominating  viewpoints  of  another  and 
an  equally  formidable  group  of  the  foemen. 
In  October,  1913,  nearly  a  year  before  Germany 
started  the  World  War,  one  of  the  recognised 
leaders  of  the  association  who  called  them- 
selves "Young  Germany"  wrote  in  the  official 
organ,  the  accepted  mouthpiece  of  the  Junker 
set  and  the  Crown  Prince's  favoured  adherents, 
a  remarkable  statement— that  is,  it  would 
have  been  a  remarkable  statement  coming 
from  any  other  source  than  the  source  from 
whence  it  did  come.     It  read  as  follows : 

*'War  is  the  noblest  and  holiest  expression 
of  human  activity.  For  us,  too,  the  great 
glad  hour  of  battle  will  strike.  Still  and 
deep  in  the  German  heart  must  live  the  joy 
of  battle  and  the  longing  for  it.  Let  us  ridi- 
cule to  the  uttermost  the  old  women  in  breeches 
who  fear  war  and  deplore  it  as  cruel  or  revolt- 
ing. War  is  beautiful.  .  .  .  When  here  on 
earth  a  battle  is  won  by  German  arms  and  the 
faithful  dead  ascend  to  heaven,  a  Potsdam 
lance  corporal  will  call  the  guard  to  the  door 
[4421 


THE    PllUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


and  'Old  Fritz,'  springing  from  his  golden 
throne,  will  give  the  command  to  present 
arms.     That  is  the  heaven  of  Young  Germany !" 

The  likening  of  Heaven  to  a  place  of  eternal 
beatitude,  populated  by  German  soldiers,  with 
a  Potsdam  lance  corporal  succeeding  Saint 
Peter  at  the  gate,  and  "Old  Fritz" — Frederick 
the  Great — in  sole  and  triumphant  occupancy 
of  the  Golden  Throne,  where,  according  to  the 
conceptions  of  the  most  Christian  races.  The 
Almighty  sits,  is  a  picture  requiring  no  com- 
ment. 

It  speaks  for  itself.  Also  it  speaks  for 
the  paranoia  of  militant  Prussianism. 

I  think  I  am  in  position  to  tell  something 
of  the  growth  of  these  sentiments  among  the 
Germans.  As  I  stated  in  the  first  chapters 
of  this  book,  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  be  on  Ger- 
man soil  in  September  and  October  of  that 
first  year  of  the  Great  War,  before  there  was 
any  prospect  of  our  entering  it  as  a  belligerent 
Power,  and  when  the  civilian  populace,  having 
been  exalted  by  the  series  of  unbroken  vic- 
tories that  had  marked  the  first  stage  of 
s  hostilities  for  the  German  forces,  east  and 
west,  was  suffering  from  the  depressions  occa- 
sioned by  the  defeat  before  Paris,  the  retreat 
from  the  Marne  back  to  the  Aisne,  and  finally 
by  the  growing  fear  that  Italy,  instead  of 
coming  into  the  conflict  as  an  ally  of  the  two 
Teutonic  Empires,  might,  if  she  became  an 
[443] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


active  combatant  at  all,  cast  in  her  lot  with 
France  and  with  England, 

It  was  from  civilians  that  I  got  a  sense 
of  the  intellectual  motive  powers  behind  the 
mass  of  civilians  in  Rhenish  Prussia.  It 
was  from  them  that  I  learned  something  of 
the  real  German  meaning  of  the  German 
word  Kultur.  In  view  of  recent  and  present 
developments  on  our  side  of  the  ocean,  cul- 
minating in  our  entry  into  the  war,  I  am 
constrained  to  believe  I  may  perhaps,  in  my 
own  small  way,  contribute  to  American  readers 
some  slight  measure  of  appreciation  of  what 
that  Kultur  means  and  may  mean  as  applied 
to  other  and  lesser  nations  by  its  creators, 
protagonists  and  proud  proprietors. 

I  heard  nothing  of  Kultur  from  the  Ger-- 
man  military  men  with  whom  I  had  there- 
tofore come  into  contact  in  Belgium  and 
in  Northern  France,  and  whom  I  still  was 
meeting  daily  both  in  their  social  and  in 
their  official  capacities.  So  far  as  one  might 
judge  by  their  language  and  their  behaviour 
they,  almost  without  an  exception,  were 
heartily  at  war  for  a  hearty  love  of  war — 
the  officers,  I  mean.  To  them  the  war — 
the  successful  prosecution  of  it,  regardless 
of  the  cost;  the  immediate  glory,  and  the 
final  ascendancy  over  all  Europe  and  Asia 
of  the  German  arms — was  everything.  With 
them  nothing  else  counted  but  that — except, 
CL  course,  the  ultimate  humbling  of  Great 
[444] 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 

Britain  in  the  dust.  Seemingly  the  woful 
side  of  the  situation,  the  losses  and  the  suf- 
ferings and  the  horrors,  concerned  them  not 
a  whit.  War  for  war's  sake;  that  was  their 
religion;  never  mind  v/hat  had  gone  before; 
never  mind  what  might  come  after.  To 
make  war  terribly  and  successfully,  to  make  it 
with  f rightfulness  and  with  a  frightful  speed, 
was  their  sole  aim. 

Never  did  I  hear  them,  or  any  one  of  them, 
openly  invoking  the  aid  of  the  Creator.  They 
were  content  with  the  tools  forged  for  their 
hands  by  their  military  overlords.  As  for 
the  men  in  the  ranks,  if  they  did  any  thinking 
on  their  own  account  it  was  not  visible  upon 
the  surface.  Their  business  was  to  use  their 
bodies,  not  their  heads;  their  trade  to  obey 
orders.  They  knew  that  business  and  they 
followed  that  trade.  And  already  poor  little 
wasted  Belgium  stood  a  smoking,  bloody 
monument  to  their  thorough,  painstaking  and 
most  ejQ&cient  craftsmanship. 

Nor,  except  among  the  green  troops  which 
had  not  yet  been  under  fire,  was  there  any 
expressed  hatred,  either  with  officers  or  men, 
for  the  opposing  soldiers.  During  our  ex- 
periences in  the  battle  lines,  and  directly  be- 
hind the  battle  lines,  in  the  weeks  immedi- 
ately preceding  the  time  of  which  I  purpose 
to  write,  we  had  aimed  at  a  plan  of  ascer- 
taining, with  perfect  accuracy,  whether  the 
German  forces  we  encountered  had  seen  any 
[445] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


service  except  theoretical  service.  If  we  ran 
across  a  command  whose  members  spoke 
contemptuously  of  the  French  or  the  English 
or  the  Belgium  soldiers,  we  might  make  sure 
in  our  own  minds  that  here  were  men  who 
had  yet  to  come  to  grips  at  close  range  with 
their  enemy. 

On  the  other  hand,  troops  who  actually 
had  seen  hard  fighting  rarely  failed  to  evince 
a  sincere  respect,  and  in  some  instances  a 
sort  of  reluctant  admiration,  for  the  courage 
and  the  steadfastness  of  their  adversaries. 
They  were  convinced — and  that  I  suppose 
was  only  natural — of  the  superiority  of  the 
German  soldiers,  man  for  man,  over  the 
soldiers  of  any  other  nation;  but  they  had 
been  cured  of  the  earlier  delusion  that  most 
of  the  stalwart  heroes  were  to  be  found  on 
the  one  side  and  most  of  the  weaklings  and 
cravens  on  the  other. 

Likewise  the  hot  furnaces  of  battle  had 
smelted  much  of  the  hate  out  of  their  hearts. 
The  slag  was  gone;  what  remained  was  the 
right  metal  of  soldierliness.  I  imagine  this 
has  been  true  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  of 
all  so-called  civilised  wars  where  brave  and 
resolute  men  have  fought  against  brave  and 
resolute  men.  Certainly  I  know  it  to  have 
been  true  of  the  first  periods  of  this  present  war. 

But  fifty  or  a  hundred  miles  away  on  Ger- 
man   soil,    among   the   home-biding   populace, 
[446] 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


was  a  different  story.  It  was  there  I  found 
out  about  Kultur.  It  was  there  I  first  began 
to  reaHse  that,  not  content  with  assuming  a 
direct  and  intimate  partnership  with  Provi- 
dence, civihan  Germany  was  taking  Providence 
under  its  patronage,  was  remodelhng  its  con- 
ceptions of  Deity  to  be  purely  and  solely  a 
German  Deity. 

That  more  or  less  ribald  jingle  called  "Me 
und  Gott!"  aimed  at  the  Kaiser  and  frequently 
repeated  in  this  country  a  few  years  before, 
had,  in  the  face  of  what  we  now  beheld,  alto- 
gether lost  the  force  of  its  one-time  humorous 
application.  As  we  appraised  the  prevalent 
sentiment,  it  had,  in  the  sober,  serious  con- 
sciousness of  otherwise  sane  men  and  women, 
become  the  truth  and  less  than  the  truth. 

Any  Christian  race,  going  to  war  in  what 
it  esteems  to  be  a  righteous  cause,  prays  to 
God  to  bless  its  campaigns  with  victory  and 
to  sustain  its  arms  with  fortitude.  It  had 
remained  for  this  Christian  race  to  assume 
that  the  God  to  whom  they  addressed  their 
petitions  was  their  own  peculiar  God,  and 
that  His  Kingdom  on  Earth  was  Germany 
and  Germany  only;  and  that  His  chosen 
people  now  and  forevermore  would  be  Ger- 
mans and  Germans  only. 

This  is  not  a  wild  statement.  Trustworthy 
evidence  in  support  of  it  will  presently  be 
offered. 

We  met  some  weirdly  interesting  persons 
[4471 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


during  our  enforced  sojourn  there  in  Aix  la 
Chapelle  in  September  and  October  of  that 
year.  There  was,  for  example,  the  invalided 
officer  who  never  spoke  of  England  or  the 
English  that  he  did  not  grind  his  teeth  together 
audibly.  I  have  never  yet  been  able  to  decide 
whether  this  was  a  bit  of  theatricalism  designed 
to  make  more  forcible  than  the  words  he 
uttered  his  detestation  for  the  country  which, 
most  of  all,  had  balked  Germany  in  her  designs 
upon  France  and  upon  the  mastery  of  the 
seas — a  sort  of  dental  punctuation  for  his 
spoken  anathemas,  as  it  were — or  whether 
it  was  an  involuntary  expression  of  his  feelings. 
In  either  event  he  grated  his  teeth  very  loudly, 
very  frequently  and  very  effectively. 

There  was  the  young  German  petty  officer, 
also  on  sick  leave,  who  told  me  with  great 
earnestness  and  professed  to  believe  the  truth 
of  it  that  two  captured  English  surgeons  had 
been  summarily  executed  because  in  their 
surgical  kits  had  been  found  instruments 
especially  designed  for  the  purpose  of  gouging 
out  the  eyes  of  wounded  and  helpless  Germans. 

And  there  was  the  spectacled  scientist-author 
spy,  who  dropped  in  on  two  of  us  one  morning 
at  the  hotel  where  we  were  quartered,  and 
who  thereafter  favoured  us  at  close  intervals 
with  many  hours  of  his  company.  It  was 
from  this  person  more  than  from  any  other 
that  I  acquired  what  I  believed  to  be  a  fairly 
adequate  conception  of  the  views  held  then 
[4481 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


and  thereafter  and  now  by  an  overwhelming 
majority  of  educated  Prussians,  trained  in  the 
Prussian  school  of  thought  and  propaganda. 

I  cannot  now  recall  this  person's  name, 
though  I  knew  it  well  at  the  time;  but  I 
do  recall  his  appearance.  He  was  tall  and 
slender,  with  red  hair;  a  lean,  keen  intel- 
lectual face;  and  a  pair  of  weak,  pale-blue 
eyes,  looking  out  through  heavy  convex  glasses. 
He  spoke  English,  French  and  Danish  with 
fluency.  He  had  been  a  world  traveller  and 
had  written  books  on  the  subject  of  travel, 
which  he  showed  us.  He  had  been  an  inventor 
of  electrical  devices  and  had  written  at  least 
one  book  on  the  subject  of  electric-lighting 
development.  He  had  been  an  amateur  pho- 
tographer of  some  note  evidently,  and  had 
written  rather  extensively  on  that  subject. 

His  present  employment  was  not  so  easily 
discerned,  though  it  was  quite  plain  that, 
like  nearly  every  mtelligent  civilian  in  that 
part  of  Germany,  he  was  engaged  upon  some 
service  more  or  less  closely  related  to  the 
military  and  governmental  activities  of  the 
empire.  He  wore  the  brassard  of  the  Red 
Cross  on  his  arm,  it  is  true,  but  apparently 
had  nothing  really  to  do  with  hospital  or 
ambulance  work.  And  he  had  at  his  disposal  a 
military  automobile,  in  which  he  made  frequent 
and  more  or  less  extended  excursions  into  the 
occupied  territory  of  France  and  Belgium. 

After  one  or  two  visits  from  him  we  de- 
[449] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


cided  that,  by  some  higher  authority,  he 
had  been  assigned  to  the  dual  task  of  ascer- 
taining our  own  views  regarding  Germany's 
part  in  the  conflict  and  of  influencing  our 
minds  if  possible  to  accept  the  views  he  and 
his  class  held.  He  m.ay  have  had  an  even 
more  important  mission;  w^e  thought  some- 
times that  he  perhaps  was  doing  a  little  espion- 
age work,  either  on  his  own  account  or  under 
orders,  because  he  began  to  seek  our  company 
about  the  time  we  noted  a  cessation  of  clumsy 
activities  on  the  part  of  those  two  preposter- 
ously mysterious  sleuths  of  the  German  Secret 
Service  who,  until  then,  had  been  watching  us 
pretty  closely. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  he  manifested  a  gentle- 
manly but  persistent  curiosity  regarding  our 
observations  and  regarding  the  articles  which 
he  knew  we  were  writing  for  American  con- 
sumption. And  meantime  he  lost  no  oppor- 
tunity of  preaching  into  our  ears  the  theories 
and  the  dogmas  of  his  Prussianised  Kultur. 

I  remember  that,  on  almost  his  first  call 
upon  us,  either  my  companion  or  mj^self 
rem.arked  upon  the  united  and  the  whole- 
hearted devotion  the  civilian  populace  of 
the  province,  from  the  youngest  to  the  oldest, 
exhibited  for  the  German  cause.  Instantly 
his  posture  changed.  From  the  polite  inter- 
viewer he  turned  into  the  zealot  who  preaches 
a  holy  cause.  His  lensed  eyes  became  pallid 
blue  sparks;  and  he  said: 
[4501 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


"Surely — and  why  not?  For  forty-odd  years 
we  have  been  educating  our  people  to  believe 
that  only  through  war  and  through  conquest 
could  our  nation  achieve  its  place  in  the  sun 
— elbowroom  for  its  industrial  and  its  spiritual 
development.  Germany  is  a  giant — the  giant 
of  the  universe  and  she  must  have  breathing 
space;  and  only  by  the  swallowing  up  of 
smaller  states  can  she  get  that  breathing  space. 
Almost  at  the  mother's  breast  we  teach  our 
babies  that.  Do  you  know,  my  friends,  what 
the  first  question  is,  in  the  first  primer  of 
geography,  which  German  children  hear  when 
they  enter  school? 

"No?  Then  I  wiU  tell  you.  The  first 
question  is  'What  is  Germany?'  And  the 
answer  is  'My  Fatherland — a  country  entirely 
surrounded  by  Enemies!' 

"So  you  see,  gentlemen,  we  start  at  the 
cradle  and  at  the  kindergarten  to  teach  our 
young  people  what  it  means  to  live  with 
Russia  on  one  side  of  them  and  with  France 
and  Belgium  and  Britain  on  the  other.  They 
cannot  forget  for  one  instant  the  task  that 
lies  before  them.  Their  educators — parents, 
teachers,  pastors,  military  instructors,  oflScials 
of  every  rank  and  every  grade — never  let  them 
forget  it." 

Even  more  illuminating  were  his  views  with 
regard  to  the  position  of  Germany  in  Europe 
before    the    war    began.     He    admitted    that 
[451] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


for  years,  by  the  neighbour-peoples,  Germany 
had  been  feared  and  distrusted.  This,  he 
insisted,  was  not  Germany's  fault,  but  a  fear 
and  a  distrust  born  of  envy  and  malice  among 
deteriorated  and  decaying  nations  for  a  land 
which,  so  far  as  Europe,  at  least,  was  con- 
cerned, was  the  mother  of  all  the  virtues 
and  all  the  great  benevolent  impulses  of  the 
century.  He  denied  that  Germany  had  ever 
been  overbearing  or  threatening;  denied  that 
anything  except  jealousy  could  lie  at  the 
back  of  the  general  suspicion  directed  against 
Prussia,  not  only  by  aliens  but — before  the  war 
began — by  Bavaria  and  by  Saxony  as  well. 

"Germany,"  he  said  to  me  one  day,  "has 
earned  the  right  to  rule  this  Hemisphere: 
and  Germany  is  going  to  rule  it!  When 
we  have  conquered  our  enemies,  as  conquer 
them  we  shall — when  we  have  implanted 
among  them  our  own  German  culture,  our 
own  German  institutions  and  our  own  Ger- 
man form  of  government,  which  surelj'^  we 
also  shall  do — they  will,  in  succeeding  gen- 
erations, be  the  better  and  the  happier  for 
it.  They  will  come  to  know,  then,  that  the 
guns  of  our  fleets  and  the  rifles  of  our  soldiers 
brought  them  blessings  in  disguise.  Out  of 
their  present  sufferings  and  their  future  humilia- 
tions will  spring  up  the  benefits  of  German 
civilisation. 

"At  first  they  may  not  want  to  accept  our 
German  civilisation.  They  will  have  to  accept 
[  452 1 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


it — at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  if  necessary. 
If  it  is  required  that  these  petty  lesser  states 
should  be  exterminated  altogether,  we  shall 
not  hesitate  before  that  task  either.  They 
are  decadents,  dying  now  of  dry  rot  and  de- 
generacy; better  that  they  should  be  dead 
altogether  than  that  the  spread  of  German 
Kultur  through  the  world  should  be  checked 
or  diverted  from  its  course.  We  shall  teach 
the  world  that  the  individual  exists  for  the  good 
of  the  state,  rather  than  that  the  state  exists 
for  the  individual." 

To  the  njiseries  that  have  been  inflicted 
upon  Belgium,  and  which  he  himself  had 
had  opportunity  to  view  at  first  hand,  he 
gave  no  heed — this  scholarly  pundit-preacher 
of  the  tenets  of  Prussianism.  With  a  wave 
of  his  hand  he  dismissed  the  question  of  the 
rights  and  wrongs  of  the  German  invasion  of 
Belgium.  He  wasted  no  sympathy  upon  Lou- 
vain,  sacked  and  pillaged  and  burned,  or  upon 
Dinant,  razed  to  the  ground  for  the  most  part, 
and  with  sundry  hundreds  of  its  male  inhabi- 
tants put  to  death  on  one  slaughter-day  in 
punitive  punishment  for  acts  of  guerrilla 
warfare  alleged  to  have  been  committed  by 
civilians  against  Germans  coming  upon  them 
in  uniform. 

Yet  I  do  not  think  that,   in  most  of  the 

relations  of  life,  he  was  a  cruel  or  even  an 

unkind  man.     He  merely  saw  Belgium  through 

glasses  made  in  Germany.     He  explained  his 

[453] 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


attitude  substantially  after  this  fashion,  as  I 
now  recall  the  sense  and  the  phrasing  of  his 
words :  - 

"What  difference  does  it  make  to  posterity 
that  we  have  had  to  destroy  a  few  hotbeds 
of  ignorance  and  shoot  a  few  thousand  undis- 
ciplined, uneducated,  turbulent  persons?  What 
difference  though  we  may  have  to  continue 
to  destroy  yet  more  Belgian  towns  and  shoot 
yet  more  Belgian  civilians?  Ultimately  the 
results  of  our  operations  are  bound  to  redound 
to  the  greater  glory  of  the  Greater  German 
Empire,  which  means  European  civilisation. 

"My  friend,  do  you  know  that  nearly  a 
quarter  of  the  inhabitants  of  Belgium  are 
illiterates,  as  you  would  put  it  in  English 
— Unalphabets,  as  we  Germans  say?  Well, 
that  is  true — a  quarter  of  them  can  neither 
read  nor  write.  In  Germany  only  a  frac- 
tional part  of  one  per  cent  of  our  people  are 
illiterate  to  that  extent.  We  have  taken 
Belgium  by  force  of  arms  and  we  are  never 
going  to  give  it  up.  Already  it  is  a  province 
of  the  German  Empire. 

"WTien  our  lawgivers  have  followed  our 
soldiers  across  the  expanded  frontiers  of  our 
Empire;  when  we  have  made  the  German 
language  the  language  of  annexed  Belgium; 
when  we  have  introduced  our  imcomparably 
superior  methods  into  all  departments  of 
Belgian  life;  when  we  have  taught  all  the 
Belgians  to  speak  the  German  tongue,  and 
[454] 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


have  required  of  them  that  they  do  speak 
it — then  these  Belgians,  as  Germans,  will 
be  better  off  than  ever  they  could  have  been 
as  Belgians.  Never  fear;  we  shall  know  how 
to  handle  them. 

"With  Alsace  and  Lorraine  we  were  too 
mild  for  their  own  good.  With  Belgium 
we  shall  be  stern;  but  we  shall  be  just.  It 
is  the  predestined  fate  of  Belgium  that  she 
should  become  a  German  possession  and  a 
German  territory.  Geography  and  destiny 
both  point  the  way  for  us,  and  we  Germans 
never  turn  from  the  duties  intrusted  to  us 
by  our  God  and  our  Kaiser!  We  mean  to 
teach  these  lesser  peoples  before  we  are  through 
that  the  individual  exists  for  the  good  of  the 
State,  not,  as  some  of  them  profess  to  believe, 
that  the  State  exists  for  the  good  of  the  in- 
dividual." 

It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  him  that  Bel- 
gians or  Frenchmen  or  Dutchmen  might  per- 
sonally prefer  to  keep  on  being  Belgians  or 
Frenchmen  or  Dutchmen,  and  might  have 
some  rights  in  the  matter;  indeed  might  prefer 
to  die  rather  than  live  under  a  system  intol- 
erable to  human  beings  reared  outside  the 
scope  of  Prussian  influence.  So  far  as  I 
might  judge,  this  never  occurred  to  any  of  the 
less  eloquent  but  equally  ardent  defenders  of 
this  peculiar  brand  oiKultur  with  whom  I  talked 
during  that  fall  in  the  Rhineland  country. 
[4551 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


We  must  have  been  blind  then,  my  com- 
panion and  I — yes,  and  deaf  too;  for  we 
diagnosed  this  bigotry  as  evidences  of  an 
egomania,  probably  confined  to  a  few  hun- 
dreds or  a  few  thousands  among  the  German- 
speaking  peoples.  In  the  light  of  what  has 
happened  since  we  all  know  that  the  disease 
affected  a  whole  nation,  and  was  a  disease  of 
which,  as  yet,  the  frequent  upsettings  of  their 
original  programme  and  the  absolute  certainty 
that  the  programme  itself  can  never  be  carried 
out  until  Europe  and  America  both  are  grave- 
yards have  not  to  any  very  noticeable  extent 
served  to  operate  as  a  cure. 

In  those  early,  optimistic  days  these  para- 
noiacs  conceived  of  a  world  that  should  some- 
time be  altogether  Prussianised.  Their  vision 
was  not  bounded  by  the  seas  about  their 
own  Continent;  it  extended  to  other  Conti- 
nents, our  own  included.  That  dream  is  over 
and  done  with.  What  they  have  yet  to 
learn — and  they  will  only  be  taught  it  at 
the  muzzle  of  guns — is  that  a  civilisation 
cannot  endure  when  it  is  half  Prussian  and 
half  free.  It  is  my  rnderstanding  that  this 
country,  along  with  ten  or  twelve  others, 
is  now  committed  to  the  task  of  enforcing  this 
lesson  upon  the  consciousness  of  the  only  con- 
federation of  enemies  to  a  representative  form 
of  government  now  left  upon  either  hemisphere. 

A  prophet  is  nearly  always  a  bore.     He  is 
[4561 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 

apt  to  be  tiresome  when  expounding  his  pre- 
dictions, and  Hkely  to  become  a  common 
nuisance  should  his  predictions  come  true. 
Indeed,  the  I-told-you-so  person  is  oftentimes 
a  worse  pest  than  the  I-am-now-telHng-you-so 
individual.  I  have  no  desire  to  assume  either 
role;  but  here  lately  I  have  not  been  able  to 
restrain  my  satisfaction  at  finding,  as  I  believed, 
that  two  of  my  own  private  convictions  are 
about  to  be  justified  by  the  accomplished  fact. 
As  a  result  of  all  that  I  saw  and  heard  in  the 
war  zone,  more  than  two  years  and  a  half 
ago,  I  made  up  my  mind  to  the  probable  con- 
summation of  these  contingencies — namely: 

First:  That,  despite  her  earlier  successes, 
despite  all  her  preparedness  and  all  her  efficiency 
and  all  her  valour,  Germany  eventually  would 
be  defeated  as  the  Southern  Confederacy  was 
defeated — by  being  bled  white  and  starved 
thin. 

Second:  That  when  to  Germany's  rulers 
this  prospect  became  certain  they  would 
with  deliberate  intent  embroil  the  United 
States  in  the  conflict  as  an  avowed  and  de- 
clared enemy,  in  order  that  the  men  who 
drove  Germany  to  the  slaughter  might  save 
their  faces  before  their  own  people,  at  the 
front  and  at  home,  by  saying  to  them  in 
effect:  "We  were  strong  enough  to  beat  all 
Europe  and  all  Asia;  we  were  not  strong 
enough  to  beat  the  supreme  Power  of  the 
New  World  too;  we,  with  our  allies,  could 
[4571 


PATHS   OF    GLORY 


not  withstand  the  combined  forces  of  the 
whole  earth." 

Though  Germany  is  still  very  far,  one 
imagines,  from  the  point  of  complete  ex- 
haustion, it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  she  is 
bleeding  white  and  starving  thin.  And,  as 
all  fair-minded  patriotic  men  on  this  side 
of  the  ocean  agree,  she  did,  by  a  persistent 
camgaign  of  aggressions  against  our  flag, 
and  by  murdering  our  people  on  the  high 
seas,  and  by  plotting  against  our  industries 
and  our  national  integrity,  finally  force  us 
into  the  war. 

Having  been  forced  into  the  war,  as  we 
are,  it  is  well  that  our  people  should  know 
to  the  fullest  possible  degree  not  only  what 
they  are  fighting  for — the  preservation  of 
democracy  in  the  world,  for  one  thing — but 
that  lilvewise  they  should  know  and  in  that 
knowledge  recognise  the  danger  to  us,  of 
the  mental  forces  operating  behind  the  mili- 
tary arm  of  our  national  enem3\ 

I  think  they  should  know  that  in  the  minds 
of  these  self -idolaters,  who  have  laid  claim 
to  Creator  and  to  creation  as  their  ovm  or- 
dained possessions,  we  shall  stand  in  no  dif- 
ferent light  than  the  Belgians  stand,  or  the 
Serbians,  or  the  Poles,  or  the  people  of  North- 
ern France.  Upon  us,  if  the  chance  is  vouch- 
safed them,  they  would  visit  a  heaping  measure 
of  the  same  wrath  they  poured  on  those 
invaded  and  broken  nations  of  Europe,  showing 
[458] 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 

to  Americans  no  more  mercy  than  they  showed 
to  them. 

I  deem  it  my  duty,  therefore,  to  write 
what  already  I  have  written  in  this  added 
chapter,  and,  before  closing  it,  to  append  cer- 
tain quotations,  as  particularly  illuminating 
evidences  of  the  besetting  mania  that  has 
been  fastened  upon  the  brains  of  an  otherwise 
rational  race  of  our  fellow  beings  through  two 
generations  of  crafty  implanting  and  foster- 
ing by  greater  maniacs,  wearing  crowns  and 
shoulder  straps,  and — yes,  the  livery  of  Our 
Lord  and  Master. 

For  the  quotations  from  the  poetic  utter- 
ances of  the  Reverend  Doctor  Vorwerk,  which 
appeared  in  Chapter  XVIII  of  this  book, 
the  writer  is  indebted  to  a  documenta- 
tion compiled  from  authentic  German  sources 
by  a  Dane,  the  Reverend  J.  P.  Bang,  D.D., 
professor  of  theology  at  the  University  of 
Copenhagen,  a  famous  Lutheran  institution, 
under  the  title  of  Hurrah  and  Hallelujah — 
which,  incidentally,  was  a  title  borrowed  from 
the  published  poetic  works  of  this  same  Doctor 
Vorwerk,  Doctor  Bang's  symposium  has  lately 
been  published  in  English  by  the  American 
publisher,  Doran,  with  an  introduction  by 
"Ralph  Connor,"  the  Canadian  novelist,  other- 
wise Major  Charles  W.  Gordon,  of  the  Cana- 
dian Overseas  Forces. 

Had    Doctor    Bang    set    forth    as    his    own 
[  459 1 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


views,  as  a  neutral,  the  amazing  utterances 
which  make  up  the  bulk  of  his  compilation, 
no  one  here  or  abroad  would  have  believed 
that  he  described  a  true  condition.  But  he 
was  smarter  than  that.  He  was  mainly  con- 
tent to  repeat  literal  translations  of  indubitable 
prayers,  poems,  sermons,  addresses — written 
and  spoken  statements  of  contemporary  Ger- 
man clergymen,  German  professors  and  German 
statesmen. 

In  further  support  of  the  point  which  I 
have  been  striving  to  make  I  mean  to  take 
the  liberty  here  of  adding  a  few  more  extracts 
from  the  first  American  edition  of  Hurrah 
and  Hallelujah,  in  each  instance  giving  credit 
to  the  original  German  author  of  the  same. 

For  instance,  the  Reverend  Doctor  Vor- 
werk,  who  appears  to  specialise  in  prayers, 
begins  one  invocation  with  this  sentence, 
which  is  especially  interesting  in  that  the 
good  pastor  couples  the  Cherubim,  the  Sera- 
phim, and — guess  what.^ — the  ZeppeUns  in 
the  same  breath: 

"Thou  \Mio  dwellest  high  above  Cheru- 
bim, Seraphim  and  Zeppelins;  Thou  Who 
art  enthroned  as  a  God  of  Thunder  in  the 
midst  of  lightning  from  the  clouds,  and  light- 
ning from  sword  and  cannon,  send  thunder, 
lightning,  hail  and  tempest  hurtling  upon 
our  enemy;  bestow  upon  us  his  banners; 
hurl  him  down  into  the  dark  burial  pits!" 
[460] 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


Another  poet,  Franz  Philippi  by  name, 
in  a  widely  circulated  work  called  World- 
Germany,  delivers  himself  in  part  as  follows : 

"Formerly  German  thought  was  shut  up 
in  her  corner;  but  now  the  world  shall  have 
its  coat  cut  according  to  German  measure 
and,  as  far  as  our  swords  flash  and  German 
blood  flows,  the  circle  of  the  earth  shall  come 
under  the  tutelage  of  German  activity." 

Herr  J.  Suze,  a  prose  writer,  says  with 
the  emphasis  of  profound  conviction : 

"The  Germans  are  first  before  the  Throne 
of  God — Thou  couldst  not  place  the  golden 
crown  of  victory  in  purer  hands." 

On  November  13,  1914,  according  to  Doctor 
Bang,  a  German  theological  professor  preached 
an  address  which  the  Berliner  Lokal  Anzeiger 
reproduced,  with  favourable  editorial  comment. 
Here  is  a  typical  paragraph  from  this  sermon: 

*'The  deepest  and  most  thought-inspiring 
result  of  the  war  is  'the  German  God.'  Not 
the  national  God  such  as  the  lower  nations 
worship,  but  'Our  God,'  Who  is  not  ashamed 
of  belonging  to  us,  the  peculiar  acquirement 
of  our  heart." 

The  Reverend   H.   Francke   is   a  pastor  in 
[4611 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


the  city  of  Liegnitz.  From  his  pulpit  he 
delivered  a  series  of  so-called  war  sermons, 
which  afterward,  at  the  request  of  the  mem- 
bers of  his  flock,  were  printed  in  a  book, 
the  cover  of  which  was  ornamented  with 
the  Iron  Cross.  And  we  find  the  Reverend 
Francke  adding  his  voice  to  the  chorus  thus: 

"Germany  is  precisely — who  would  ven- 
ture to  deny  it? — the  representative  of  the 
highest  morality,  of  the  purest  humanity, 
of  the  most  chastened  Christianity." 

The  Reverend  Walter  Lehmann,  pastor 
at  the  town  of  Hamberge,  in  Holstein,  went 
a  trifle  further.  When  he  got  out  his  book 
of  war  sermons  he  published  it  under  the 
title  About  the  German  God;  and  therein, 
among  other  things,  he  said: 

"This  means  that  we  go  forth  to  war  as 
Christians,  precisely  as  Christians,  as  we 
Germans  understand  Christianity;  it  means 
that  we  have  God  on  our  side.  .  .  .  Can 
the  Russians,  the  French,  the  Serbians,  the 
English,  say  this.''  No;  not  one  of  them. 
Only  we  Germans  can  say  it.  .  .  .  If  God 
is  for  us  who  can  be  against  us?  It  is  enough 
for  us  to  be  a  part  of  God.  ...  A  nation" — 
Germany — "which  is  God's  seed  corn  for  the 
future.  .  .  .  Germany  is  the  centre  of  God's 
plans  for  the  world.  .  .  .  That  glorious  feat 
[4621 


THE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


of  arms  forty-four  years  ago" — the  Battle  of 
Sedan — "gives  us  courage  to  believe  that  the 
German  soul  is  the  world's  soul;  that  God 
and  Germany  belong  to  one  another." 

These  are  the  concluding  words  of  the 
Reverend  Lehmann's  book  About  the  German 
God: 

"Oh,  that  the  German  God  may  permeate 
the  world!  Oh,  that  the  eternal  victory 
may  blossom  before  the  God  of  the  German 
soul!" 

It  will  not  do  to  slight  the  Herr  Pastor 
Job  Rump,  lie.  Doctor,  of  Berlin.  Hearken 
a  moment  to  a  word  or  two  from  one  of  Doc- 
tor Rump's  published  pamphlets: 

"A  corrupt  world,  fettered  in  monstrous 
sin,  shall,  by  the  will  of  God,  be  healed  by 
the  German  nature.  .  .  .  Ye" — the  Germans 
— "are  the  chosen  generation,  the  royal  priest- 
hood, the  holy  nation,  the  peculiar  people." 

A  learned  and  no  doubt  a  pious  professor, , 
Herr  G.  Roethe,  is  credited  with  this  modest 
claim : 

"While  other  nations  are  born,  ripen  and 
grow  old,  the  Germans  alone  possess  the 
gift  of  rejuvenescence." 

14681 


PATHS    OF    GLORY 


And  SO  on  and  so  forth,  for  two  hundred 
and  thirty-four  pages  of  Hurrah  and  Hal- 
lelujah. The  run  of  the  contents  is  quite  up 
to  sample.  None  of  us  can  object  to  these 
reverend  gentlemen  seeking  to  walk  with 
God;  what  w^e  do  object  to  is  their  under- 
taking to  lead  Him. 

So  far  as  I  can  tell,  Doctor  Bang  has  not 
overlooked  a  single  bet.  He  makes  out  a 
complete  case;  and,  what  is  more,  in  so  doing 
he  relies  not  upon  his  own  conclusions,  but 
upon  the  avowed  utterances  of  distinguished 
German  savants,  clergymen  and  versifiers. 

These,  then,  are  the  spoken  thoughts  of 
civilian  leaders  of  our  enemy.  If  the  lead- 
ers believe  these  things  their  followers  must 
also  believe  them;  must  believe,  with  the 
Reverend  Lehmann  and  the  Reverend  Vor- 
werk,  that  God  is  a  German  God,  and  should 
properly  be  so  addressed  by  a  worshipper 
upon  his  knees,  since  one  prayer  begins  "O 
German  God!";  must  believe,  with  Von  Bern- 
hardi — who  spoke  of  "the  miserable  life  of  all 
small  states" — that  "to  allow  to  the  weak 
the  same  right  of  existence  as  to  the  strong, 
vigorous  nation  means  presumptuous  encroach- 
ment upon  the  natural  laws  of  development"; 
and  with  Treitschke,  that  "the  small  nations 
have  no  right  to  existence  and  ought  to  be 
swallowed  up";  and  with  Lasson,  that  "It 
is  moral,  inasmuch  as  it  is  reasonable,  that  the 
[  464  ] 


HE    PRUSSIAN    PARANOIA 


small  states,  in  spite  of  treaties,  should  become 
the  prey  of  the  strongest";  and  must  believe 
that  to  Prussia  was  appointed  the  task  of  curing 
the  whole  world,  America  included,  of  what 
— according  to  the  Prussian  ideal — ails  it. 

It  is  the  nation  which  believes  these  things, 
and  which  has  striven  in  this  war  to  practice 
what  its  preachers  preached,  that  we  now 
are  called  upon  to  fight.  If  we  remember 
this  as  we  go  along  it  will  help  us  to  under- 
stand some  of  the  things  the  enemy  will  seek 
to  do  unto  us;  and  should  help  him  to  under- 
stand some  of  the  things  we  mean  to  do  unto 
him. 

Indeed,  there  is  hope  of  his  being  able 
some  day  to  understand  that  we  entered  this 
war  not  against  a  people  or  a  nation  so  much 
as  we  entered  it  against  an  idea,  a  disease,  a 
form  of  paranoia,  a  form  of  rabies,  a  form  of 
mania  which  has  turned  men  into  blasphemous 
and  murderous  mad  dogs,  running  amuck 
and  slavering  in  the  highways  of  the  world. 

What  would  any  intelligent  American  do 
if  a  mad  dog  entered  the  street  where  he 
lived,  even  though  that  dog,  before  it  went 
imad,  had  been  a  kind  and  docile  creature  .^^ 
'And  what  is  he  going  to  do  in  the  existing 
situation.? 

The  same  answer  does  for  both  questions. 
Because  there  is  only  one  answer. 


[465] 


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